He set the photograph down.
He put his face in his hands.
He was not crying but he was close to it and he was deciding whether to be close to it or to pull back, the specific negotiation of a fourteen-year-old boy with his emotions in front of his mother.
I let him negotiate it without helping him.
“I think,” he said finally, “I need to apologize to him.”
“To Sam,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Is that possible? Can I go back?”
I thought about this.
“I think that’s possible,” I said. “I’ll call the restaurant tomorrow and explain the situation and see if Sam would be willing to receive an apology.”
“You’d do that with me?” he said.
“We’d do it together,” I said.
He nodded.
“What if he doesn’t want to see me?” Leo said.
“Then we respect that,” I said. “An apology is for the person being apologized to, not for the person apologizing. If Sam doesn’t want to receive it, that’s his right and we honor it.”
“And if he does?” Leo said.
“Then you tell him the truth,” I said. “Not the full story. He doesn’t need the full story. But you tell him what you did was wrong and that you’re sorry.”
“Without making it about me,” Leo said.
“Without making it about you,” I said.
He was quiet for a moment.
“Can I look at these?” he said, gesturing at the photographs.
“Yes,” I said.
He went through them slowly, picking each one up and looking at it before setting it down, in the careful way he handled things that mattered to him.
“He really was funny,” Leo said, looking at one of them.
“Which one?” I said.
“This one,” he said. He held up the photograph from the birthday party, the one where Danny was laughing at something outside the frame.
“He laughed like that for real,” I said. “With his whole body.”
“What was funny?” Leo said.
“I don’t remember,” I said. “Something his friend Marcus said, probably. Marcus always made him laugh.”
