That's what does it. Really, really does it, he means. Radar's ears can go a little out of whack when he's upset, he's known that for ages, even if they're reliable the rest of the time he can still miss things if he's wound up too tight. Like if someone who maybe isn't his dad-dad but kinda is somehow, like if that person leaves, maybe there'll be a funny echo in his ears, and he'll be in such a tizzy that he thinks it means gone, permanent, forever when it really doesn't mean anything at all. And maybe that's what he'd been hoping this whole time. That he was wrong.

But animals have better hearing than Radar ever will. They know stuff, too.

And Co knows: Gone. Permanent. Forever.

Radar's breath hitches like he's about to stop breathing altogether. He sinks to the ground next to Edgar and Co, and, completely silently, begins to cry.