It is one question and you ask it once and then you shut up.

The question is six words and I had thirty-eight months to ask it.

Why do you want to go?

That is all.

Six words, in a booth, before the waitress comes, and then nothing — no advice, no reassurance, no we’re a family — just the question and then a silence long enough to be uncomfortable for both of you.

Because a seventeen-year-old who has spent two months working out how to raise something has the next three sentences already written.

She is not waiting for you to be wise.