Milo shook his head. “No. This one is mine.”
Jake entered carrying a small package and stopped when he saw the book. “Can I come in?” he asked, even though they were in the dining room.
Milo understood what he meant. “Yeah.”
Jake set the package down. Inside was a hardbound sketchbook with Milo’s name stamped on the cover. Jake had paid for it himself.
Milo ran his thumb over the letters. “What is this for?”
Jake shrugged. “The next twenty-seven pages. Or two hundred. Whatever.”
Milo looked up.
Jake added, “No page limit.”
For a second, Milo saw every version of the room at once: torn paper on the floor, Jake smiling in the doorway, Sarah holding the scrap from under the mattress, the sentence about not staying hanging over all of them.
Then he opened the new sketchbook to the first blank page.
At the top, in small letters, he wrote a title.
Permanent did not mean unbroken.
Underneath, he began to draw home.
