I straightened.
“You did?”
“He wasn’t home. His mother was.”
“Nana?”
He smiled faintly.
“Junie told you about Nana?”
“Yes.”
“She gave me tea and made me feel like I was twelve.”
“That sounds right.”
“She told me Silas was at church.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“I know,” Aaron said. “Shows what I assumed too.”
We stood in silence for a moment.
Assumptions are quiet until they embarrass you.
Then they become mirrors.
Aaron looked down at his boots.
“I judged him.”
“So did I,” I admitted.
He looked up.
“You?”
“The first time I saw him, yes.”
“But you asked him for help.”
“Only because I was more afraid for Kinsley than I was of him.”
That truth sat there.
Not pretty.
But honest.
Sometimes courage is not pure.
Sometimes it is just fear pointed in the right direction.
On Monday morning, Silas was still not on the neighborhood route.
