“You want me to bring her back to that house,” I said.

“You want me to just set her back down in that kitchen.”

“We can talk about this like sensible adults,” he said.

“Dad, did you see what went on in the kitchen?” I asked.

He breathed heavily into the phone a third time.

I knew he was staring at the toaster or the tile backsplash.

“I was busy wiping down the sink,” Thomas said.

He didn’t ask what the doctors had found.