"I know," John blurts immediately, pushing his hands into his hair as if he might physically block any other wayward scraps of information from worming their way into his head. "I know. I just..."

He snags there for a moment, caught between the well-worn guilt of it all, a voice not unlike Melanie's telling him that there's no excuse, and the fresh anxiety that prompted him to wonder so fucking hard in the first place. He huffs out a damp, humorless approximation of a laugh, his hands curling into fists. "I thought you were going to walk into a fucking fog bank, Martin, what was I supposed to...?"

Not that, is the obvious answer, but it's not a particularly enlightening one. And beneath all the guilt and anxiety, he's still not really sure what the hell is going on. They've never really talked about Martin's mother, or her passing. The times when it might have been appropriate had coincided neatly with times that they were barely speaking to one another, and he knows enough — more than he wants to, considering the source — to know why Martin might not want to discuss it. But there are ways to end a conversation that don't involve fleeing the fucking county, and Martin's generally better at that sort of thing than John is, anyway. He thinks he has a right to his concern, if nothing else.