He looked at me for a long moment, the way children do when they are reading their parents more closely than their parents realize.

“Is Dad eating dinner with us?” he asked.

“He has a late meeting,” I said, and I kept my back to him, because I did not trust my face.

Leo let out a short, hollow little laugh, a sound far too old for a twelve-year-old.

“He had a meeting last Thursday, too,” he said.

I did not answer that either.

We sat down to eat, the two of us at a table set for three, and partway through the meal Leo mentioned, in a careful, casual voice, a boy at his school whose parents were going through a terrible divorce.