“She considered him someone she trusted.”
“She trusted him so much she didn’t tell him any of this.”
Henry felt the truth beneath Mason’s anger. The boy was not only upset that Claire had made plans for him. He was grieving the fact that she was no longer there to explain them.
Henry understood that kind of anger.
He had carried it since the hospital.
Questions had become a way of keeping Claire present. Every secret he discovered felt like another conversation she had denied him, even though he knew she had never intended to die.
“Mason,” he said, “you don’t have to sign anything.”
The boy looked at him.
“You don’t have to come with me. You don’t have to accept money, a room, a school, or a family simply because Claire hoped you might.”
“Then what exactly do you want?”
Henry glanced at the line bearing his name.
“I want ten minutes in which neither of us decides the rest of our lives.”
Mason’s grip loosened slightly on his backpack.
Henry continued, “After that, you may leave. I won’t stop you.”
For a moment, Mason said nothing.
Then he walked toward the office door.
Henry believed he had lost him.
But Mason stopped with his hand on the brass handle.
“Ten minutes,” he said.
He opened the door and stepped into the hallway.
Henry followed.
