Scrubbing his forehead with the back of his hand, Elias stared at the wall across from where he sat. If all this were the truth, then it wasn't so simple a thing as he had first imagined. He squinted.
"Why did you not prepare for the trip home?" he asked. His tone was flat, but there was nothing in it that accused; it was clear that Elias was asking the question simply to make sense of the rest of the story. He still couldn't understand why someone would make a journey to see a family member they'd never known about before, without preparing for the trip home.