If he did, he did not show it.

He simply talked to his mother’s stone in the low sun, and let me hold his hand on the walk back to the car, and asked if we could get ice cream, and I said yes, of course, yes to anything, and we drove home into the last ordinary evening the two of us would have before the truth arrived to change us both.

Chapter 13 — Like a Live Grenade

We drove home in complete silence, Noah in the back seat looking out the window, me with both hands white-knuckled on the wheel and a sealed envelope burning a hole in my coat pocket the entire way.