“People ask questions.”

“They ask you questions all the time.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

He got up to put his plate in the sink.

The conversation ended where so many others had ended: with him performing a useful household task while I sat with the question he had left behind.

Margaret arrived in the afternoon carrying a blue sweater for Noah.

She showed it to me before wrapping it and said the color would suit his eyes.