In the morning Theo wanted to speak to someone without his mother.
Beth called Nina from outside the district, where they'd returned for the arranged follow-up. Her voice was controlled in the way that made Nina expect it to break if she chose the wrong question.
“He says he's got messages.”
“From Martin?”
“Apparently.”
Nina stood in Iris's hallway with her coat half on. “Is he with you?”
“He's inside. He wants you to come. Not to tell him what to say.”
“I won't.”
Beth was quiet for a moment. “I told him that.”
Nina drove herself. Her car felt oddly hers again, the seat in the right place, the little packet of tissues where she had left it. She didn't put on music. At a light she saw a woman in the next car singing alone with absolute concentration and envied her the small occupation.
Theo was waiting near a wall with posters on it, his camera strap wound around his wrist. Beth stood near the entrance. She hadn't tried to stand in front of him.
“Thanks,” he said when Nina came over.
“What do you need?”
“Just don't act like I'm in trouble before I do it.”
“All right.”
He looked at her for another second, deciding how much that meant. Then he went to the officer who'd arranged to hear him.
They went through the request in plain terms. Theo wanted to show a particular conversation. He didn't want his mother reading everything on his phone, and he didn't want to hand it over and find out later that other people had looked at his pictures and friends' messages. The officer asked what he was prepared to show now. Nina was there because Theo had asked, and she made herself remain a person sitting in a chair, not the adult about to smooth the whole thing into agreement.
He opened the conversation himself.
The first message he showed was weeks old. Martin had used an ordinary greeting, a remembered joke about a fox that could never cross a river. Theo stared at that part longer than he meant to.
“He used to watch them,” he said.
Nobody interrupted.
“Mom doesn't really. She says she'll watch when it's finished, and then something happens.”
Nina thought of Beth telling her about the brush-tail fox. They had been remembering the same work from different sides of the table.
Martin had asked how he was, said he missed him, asked whether he was still seeing his old friend. The messages didn't begin with a demand for an address. They moved toward it, an unhurried sequence of reasonable questions.
Theo scrolled to his reply.
He had answered that he still made films. He'd wanted to show one to his friend Leo, who hadn't understood why he kept disappearing. He'd asked Martin whether things could be normal for one afternoon.
Nina watched his finger stop above the screen. That question was worse to show than an address would have been. It was something he'd wanted from his father, recorded in words his mother would be able to read.
“Did you meet him?” the officer asked.
“No.”
“Did you give him the place you were staying?”
“No. I said a street we used to go down. Near Leo's. Not where we lived.”
He showed that too. The distinction was there in the messages, alongside another thing: Martin asking who was making it hard to arrange, asking if Beth had told him not to reply, promising that he could sort the adults out if Theo would help him understand where everyone was.
Theo put the phone down so abruptly that it struck the table.
“He didn't ask it like that. Not at first.”
“I can see,” the officer said.
Theo looked at Nina. “You can see too?”
“Yes.”
“You don't think I was stupid.”
She almost said no too quickly. “I think he asked about a thing he knew you wanted someone to care about.”
Theo looked away. He didn't thank her for the explanation. She wasn't sure it had helped.
The officer asked which parts he was willing to provide for the inquiry and how he wanted to do it. They worked through the particular exchange, preserving the things Theo chose to show with enough surrounding context to understand what had been asked. No one treated the rest of the phone as something already granted because he'd opened one conversation.
When they reached a message with Leo's name in it, Theo stopped.
“He's not in this.”
“We need to understand the question your father asked,” the officer said. “We don't need to read everything you and your friend said to each other.”
Theo breathed out. Nina realized he'd been waiting for someone to make the larger demand.
He chose to give the part of the exchange that showed his own reply. It was not the easiest version of himself. The officer asked a few more questions, making clear which answers Theo knew and which he was guessing at. Nina stayed in her chair while he answered.
At the end he put the phone in his pocket, keeping his hand around it.
“Do I have to tell Mom?”
The officer asked what he was worried about. Theo looked toward the door, then back at the table.
“She said never reply. She'll make it about that. Not about what he did.”
Nina looked toward Beth through the open doorway.
“She may be angry,” she said.
“I know.”
“I won't tell it for you.”
He nodded, slowly. That seemed to be a smaller promise he could use.
They came back into the public waiting area together. Beth rose before she saw Theo's face clearly. She stopped herself from asking the first question, then asked the second one too quickly.
“What did you show them?”
Theo looked at Nina. Nina didn't answer.
“Some messages,” he said.
“From your dad?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
He took his hand out of his pocket. “Before. Not today.”
Beth looked at the phone-shaped bulge in his coat, and Nina saw what it cost her not to reach for it.
“You answered him.”
Theo lifted his chin. “Yes.”
For a moment neither moved. People passed behind them, a man asking where to go, another officer opening a door. The conversation could become enormous here if any one of them pushed it hard enough.
“Not here,” Beth said.
Theo's shoulders lowered a little. He didn't look relieved.
They went outside. Nina followed at a distance that left the two of them room to be angry without making it a performance for her.