“Yeah, okay, guilty of interforces rivalry.” His smile, this time, is unguarded, and I like him better for it. “The advice stands, though. In an ideal world, sure, he wouldn’t have to fight back. But the only thing more certain than death and taxes is bullies.”

“I’ll consider it,” I say. His body language is slowly relaxing, one muscle at a time, and he takes a deeper drink of the tea. “So, you said you’re only in the cabin for six months, is that right? That’s pretty short.”

“Writing a book,” he says. “Don’t worry, I won’t bore you to death with the plot or anything. But I was between jobs, and I thought this would be the perfect place to come for peace and quiet before I head off to the next thing.”

“What’s the next thing?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Something interesting. And probably far away. I’m not much for being settled. I like . . . experiences.”

I would give anything to be settled, and to avoid more experiences, but I don’t tell him that. Instead, we sit in awkward silence for a moment, and as soon his glass is empty, he stands up to go like he’s been released from a trap.

I shake his hand. He has a rough palm, like someone who’s done plenty of hard work in his life. “Thanks again for bringing Connor home,” I say. He nods, but I realize he isn’t looking at me. He’s stepped back, and is looking at the outside of the house. “What?”

“Oh, nothing. Just thinking . . . you really should get those roof shingles fixed before the rain comes. You’re going to have a hell of a leak.”

I hadn’t noticed, but he’s right; one of the many spring storms has blown a sizable patch of roofing away, leaving fluttering tar paper exposed. “Dammit. Know any good roofers?” I don’t mean it. I’m still half out the door, mentally planning our escape for when it’s necessary. But he, of course, takes me seriously.

“Not a single one around here. But I’ve done some roof work in my day. If you just want a repair, I can do it for you cheap.”

“I’ll think about it,” I tell him. “Look, I’m sorry, but I need to see to my son. Thank you for being . . . so kind.”

That seems to make him uncomfortable. “Sure,” he says. “Okay. Sorry.” He rocks back and forth for a moment, as if debating saying something else, then casts me a quick glance. “Let me know.”

Then he’s gone without a backward look, hands in his pockets, head down and shoulders loose. He doesn’t look back. I gather up the glasses and go back inside the house, and just as I’m closing the door I see that Cade has paused a little bit up the hill to look back. I raise my hand silently. He raises his.

And I shut the door.

I wash out the glasses and knock on Connor’s door. After a long moment he says, “Come in,” and I find him sprawled on his bed, game controller on his chest, all his attention on the screen across the room. He’s playing some kind of racing game. I don’t interrupt him. I sink down on the edge of his bed, careful not to block his view, and wait until his in-game vehicle crashes. He pauses the game before I reach out to smooth hair back from his forehead.

He’s going to have an impressive bruise, I think, but no black eyes or there’d already be darkening from burst capillaries. There’s another mark on his left cheek, just where a right-hander would have punched him, and I see raw scrapes on the palms of his hands, where he must have broken his fall. The knees of his blue jeans are abraded and bloodied.

“Does it hurt?” I ask him. He shakes his head mutely. “Okay, sorry, I have to do this.” I lean over and touch his nose, pushing and moving it to make sure that I don’t feel anything strange. There isn’t any break; I’m certain of that. I’ll schedule a doctor’s appointment in the next few days just to make sure, though.

“Mom, enough!” Connor pushes my hand away and picks up his game controller, but he doesn’t start the game again. Just fiddles with it idly.

“Who was it?” I ask him.

He shrugs. Not as if he doesn’t know, of course, but he doesn’t want to tell. He says nothing, but he doesn’t start the new game, either. If he didn’t want to talk, I think, he’d have the thing roaring at top volume. Standard avoidance technique these days.

“You’d tell me if you were in trouble, wouldn’t you?” I ask him. That draws his focus, just for a moment.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he says. “Because if I did, you’d just pack us up and move us again, right?”

That hurts. It hurts because it’s true. Javi’s left me the Jeep, but I still have to go trade it for the van, and the instant I pull that big, white beast into our driveway, my son will be proven right. Worse: now he’s going to believe he’s caused it to happen, as if his getting hit by bullies is forcing me to uproot the family. I hope Lanny doesn’t decide to blame him, too, because there’s no viciousness like that of a teen girl deprived of something she wants. And she wants to stay here. I know that, even if she doesn’t.

“If I decide to move us again, it won’t be because of anything you or your sister have done,” I tell him. “It’ll be because it’s the best, safest thing for us all. Okay, kid? We straight?”

“Straight,” he says. “Mom? Don’t call me kid. I’m not a kid.”

“I’m sorry. Young man.”

“It’s not like this is the first time I got punched. Won’t be the last. It’s not the end of the world.” After another few seconds of fiddling, he puts the controller aside and rolls toward me, head propped up on his hand. “In his letters, does Dad ever say anything about us?”

Lanny must have told him something, but she couldn’t have told him all of it—certainly not what she’d read in that vile message. So I choose my words carefully. “He does,” I say carefully. “Sometimes.”

“And why won’t you at least read that part to us?”

“Because that wouldn’t be fair. I can’t just read you the part where he pretends to be a good dad.”

“He was a good dad. He didn’t pretend about that.”

My son says it with perfect calm, and it hurts, hurts like a piece of iron shoved in where my heart should be. And of course he’s right, from his perspective. His dad loved him. That’s all he ever saw, or knew; his dad was great, and then his dad was a monster. There was never any middle ground, no adjustment period. He saw his dad that morning of The Event, hugged him, and by that evening his father was a murderer, and he wasn’t allowed to mourn him, miss him, or love him, ever again.

I want to cry. But I don’t. I say, “It’s okay to still love the times you had with your dad. But he was more than just your dad, and that other part . . . that other part was, and is, nothing you should love.”

“Yeah,” Connor says, thumbing his game back on. He isn’t looking at me. “I wish he was dead.” That hurts, too, because I wonder if he’s just saying it because he knows that I wish it, too.

I wait, but he doesn’t pause the game again. I say over the roar of the sound effects, “You’re sure you won’t tell me who hit you? And why?”

“Bullies, and no reason. Jeez, leave it, Mom. I’m fine.”

“Would you like to learn some moves from Javi? Or—” I almost say Mr. Cade, but I stop myself. I just met the man. I don’t really know how Connor feels about him. I don’t know how I feel about him.

“I’m not starring in some teen movie,” he tells me. “It doesn’t work like that in real life. By the time I get any good I’ll be graduated.”

“Yeah, but think of the epic graduation fight,” I tell him. “Middle of the school auditorium? Everybody cheering while you take down your bullies?”

He pauses the game. “More like me ending up bloody and in the hospital, and all of us getting charged with assault. They never show you that part in the movies.”

I don’t quite know how to phrase it, so I say, “Connor . . . how did you meet Mr. Cade today?”