“Oh, he doesn’t want me to escalate,” Patrick snarled. “Do you hear that, Laur? He doesn’t want me to escalate!”
“I think the whole neighborhood’s heard now, Pat,” Lauren said. There was an edge of despair in her voice that rendered it almost unfamiliar, even though Sam must have heard her speak a hundred times before. “Let’s just go home, or back to the hospital. This isn’t going to fix anything.”
“Who’s trying to fix anything?” Patrick’s voice grew, somehow, even louder: “I know you’re in there, Sam! If you’re old enough to steal from me, then you’re old enough to face me like a man!”
“He’s seventeen.” That was Mara, clipped and cold. “And he took your stupid, ugly car for a joyride around the lake, not to a chop shop?—”
“Stupid?!” Patrick’s incredulous rage cracked through the word, splintering it. “Ugly?!”
“—and the important thing,” Mara continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, “is what happened to yourson, which I’m sure we can all agree we feel sick about. But it was an accident?—”
“Oh, a likely story?—”
“And I know Sam’s very sorry?—”
“But not sorry enough to face the consequences, eh?”
“Sorrier, actually,” said Sam quietly, stepping past his parents to stand before the mottled, furious Patrick Thompson. “Sorrier than I’ve ever been about anything in my life.”
Far from looking mollified, the apology seemed to further enrage Patrick. Then again, maybe it was just the sight of Sam that fanned the flame of his anger; Sam certainly wouldn’t have blamed him. Or…looking back as an adult, Sam can’t ignore the uncomfortable possibility that perhaps the man was just very upset, reeling after a series of blows that might have thrown off anyone’s equilibrium, and had seized with relief the nearest available lightning rod.
Whatever the reason, Patrick snarled, “You should be sorry,” as he stepped forward, jabbing a finger hard into Sam’s chest and then repeating the gesture occasionally for emphasis. “You stole my car. You drove it into thelake! Youruinedmy son’s life!”
“Patrick!” It was the angriest Sam had ever heard Jake’s mother; she sounded near tears. “Don’t—how could you say—Jake’s life isn’truined.”
“Oh, no, of course not.” Patrick’s voice was sharp and bitter. “He’s going to go off to study ballet at Juilliard next fall, just like he wanted! A completely pulverized ankle won’t impact that at all! Those severed ligaments and crushed bones? No big deal! The surgeries and physical therapy and years of rehab he has coming to him definitely won’t be an issue. Shouldn’t beanykind of problem that his doctors don’t know if he’ll ever be able to walk on it again!”
At this point, Sam began to feel as though he might throw up in sheer horror for the second time in less than twelve hours. Not thinking about it, his body making the call for him, he crouched down and put his head between his knees.
This was a mistake. A moment later Sam was being grabbed by the collar of his T-shirt and hauled upright, held an inch from Patrick’s now-purpled face. Everyone was screaming—Patrick demanding to know what right Sam had to collapse when this was his fault, Lauren begging Patrick to let Sam go, David threatening to call the police, Mara shrilly insisting Sam was only a child.
And Sam could have shouted, too. He could have told Patrick that Jake had stolen the car, that Jake had been drunk, that both of those things had happened as a direct result of Patrick’s own actions. He could have explained that he’d only taken the driver’s seat so Jake wouldn’t crash it himself; he could have pointed out that the other driver was at fault, and that he couldn’t have prevented it no matter how desperately he’d wanted to.
But he hadn’t. He’d watched, instead, as Patrick pulled back his fist, and then he’d turned his head, waiting for the blow. He knew to his bones he deserved it; he wanted Patrick to hit him. Anything to make his outside match what churned within. Anything to feel like he was receiving some sort of just punishment for his unthinkable crime.
Patrick didn’t hit him, though. In the end, after a hanging second, he muttered, “Saints above, what am I doing?” and let Sam go. And then…Sam had never seen anything quite like it, the way all the fight seemed to drain away from him, leaving something behind smaller and less certain than the Mr. Thompson who’d stormed out of the house the evening before. Some of the man’s commanding presence was whittled awaythere before Sam’s eyes on the doorstep, leaving him looking old. Sallow. Lost.
“You’ll hear from our lawyers,” he said, but it didn’t sound like a threat so much as a weary promise. “Let’s go, Lauren. Let’s go.”
Sam and his parents stood there together and watched them walk down the drive, climb back into Patrick’s Mercedes, peel away. Normally, David would have made a crack about the wasted opportunity to simply walk around the block; he didn’t. None of them said anything at all until:
“Sam, I would like you to go upstairs, and pack an overnight bag, and get in the car.” Mara’s voice was calm and dead and empty, a forest after a fire. “Right now, please.”
Sam blinked at her, surprised. “Where?—?”
“I said,” Mara said, in that same blank voice, “right now, please.”
It was a tone he’d never heard her use before, and it scared him; he didn’t argue. He went upstairs and packed a bag, and then, at her instruction, he got in the car. His father, as they passed, said, “Mara, where are you—” and then, silenced by a sharp look, stayed in the kitchen, looking sorrowfully after them.
The drive was silent, too, not even music. Sam tried to break it a few times, but every time he did his mother’s knuckles grew a little whiter on the steering wheel, so he stopped. The previous day’s gray weather had given way to a sharp, sparkling snow, the kind that felt like knives in the wind and glittered like sequins as it fell. Each flake looked as brittle as Sam felt, as Mara seemed, as the energy between them had palpably become.
He was pleased, horribly, when they pulled up to Silverman’s. He always had been, all his life. And he was pleased, as his mother dragged him inside by the sleeve, to see Deb behind the counter. That, too, had been true all his life.
But his pleasure had evaporated when Mara snarled, “Well! You know what, Deb? You were right! I was an unfit parent for him, just like you said, and I ruined him, just like you said, and it nearly got him killed, just like you said! And, as a bonus, he’s become a monster, just like you might as well have said, so you know what! Fine! My bad!Youdo it.Youget him through high school, if you think you know so much better than I do! I give up!”
“Mara,” Deb said, wide-eyed, glancing between the two of them. “For God’s sake, what are you even saying? Let’s just talk for a second. What the hell happened?”
“Ask him,” Mara said, her voice tight in a way it would take Sam years to realize meant she was holding back tears. “Askhim; I can’t—” and then she was gone, turning on her heel and storming out of the deli without even saying goodbye.
