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“It is not.”

She puts her belt in the buckle. I let the quiet go on long enough that I think we are finished with it.

“Wait.”

I wait.

“You told me to walk away.”

“I did.”

“You didn’t.”

“I walked away from those two at the book sale. And in the grocery store. And twice in that hallway before you came around the corner.”

I put the key in.

“Today it stopped working.”

“So you get to and I don’t.”

“No.”

I turn in the seat so that she has my whole face, because this is the part I have done badly for a year.

“You walk away until it is time to stop walking away.”

She waits.

“That is nearly always. Today it was not.”

“How am I supposed to know which one it is?”

“You will have walked away three times and it will still be happening. Then you finish it. Once. Quickly.”

“And then what?”

“And then you come and tell me, and I will decide whether I am angry, and I will tell you which.”

She thinks about that.

“I was never there when it happened to you,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Not once.”

She does not answer that one.

I start the engine.

“Now you know what I would do if I were.”

She looks out of the window at the gymnasium doors.

“What did they say about him?”

“Nothing you need.”