We laughed, and he laughed too.

At lunch afterward, he announced that bicycles were easier to learn when adults stopped “talking the whole time.” Lauren lifted her eyebrows at me.

I admitted the criticism was fair.

Our visits expanded gradually, with Mason’s comfort guiding the changes.

I took him to the public library for an hour while Lauren ran errands nearby.

Later, with everyone’s agreement, he spent a whole Saturday afternoon with me at my house.

We made pizza, assembled a small shelf for the books he’d begun leaving there, and watched a documentary about space exploration.