I smiled at him.

Softly.

I did not trust myself to say anything, because the only true thing I could have said was one he was about to learn on his own, at a resort front desk, in under twenty-four hours, and I did not want to spoil it.

He kissed my cheek — a dry, careless kiss, the kiss of a man who has already mentally left — and he went out to the waiting car where his mother and sister sat, and I stood in the doorway and watched them drive away with the vacation I had, unknowingly, been intended to fund.

Leo came and stood beside me.

“Are we really going to dig potatoes all weekend, Mom?” he asked, a little glum.