Page 37 of Not a Word

Catherine smiled a thank-you, went to the door, and knocked. When the door started to open, McCabe drove off.

Holden, tears already forming, threw his arms around her. “Oh, Mom,” he wept. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Catherine put her arms around him, wanting to comfort him, but also miffed. Reece came by, she thought. He broke the news. That was for me to do.

“It’s okay,” she said, patting his back. “Everything’s going to be okay.” She pulled back, far enough to look into his face. “Reece was here, wasn’t he?”

Holden nodded.

“Well, Mommy’s here now,” she said.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again.

“I know. Me too. So you know . . . what happened. Your father, that woman.”

Holden slowly nodded.

“It’s a horrible thing. A horrible, horrible thing,” Catherine said.

Once inside, with the door closed, Holden began to sob.

“It’s okay,” his mother said.

Holden doubled over, his back heaving as he wept. Catherine wrapped her arm around him, guided him to the couch. “I know, I know. It’s hard to believe,” she said soothingly.

“Everything’s gone to shit,” he said between sobs. “It’s all gone to shit.”

“No, no, we’ll get through this,” she said, sitting down next to him. “You know I’m here for you. You have to be strong, you have to—”

He jumped up from the couch, startling her. The sobs had stopped as though a switch had been flipped. His cheeks still lined with tears, he managed a smile and said, “I have an idea.”

“. . . Okay. What kind of idea?”

“We should take a trip.”

“A trip.”

“A round-the-world trip!” he said, waving his hands in the air. “Maybe a cruise! Book a couple rooms on one of those big ocean liners that stops in ports all over the world! What do they call them on a ship? Are they still rooms? Don’t they call them cabins?” He laughed. “That’s crazy. A cabin is something you find in the middle of the woods, not on a ship. But that’s what they call it, right? So we’d get two cabins, maybe one with windows or a little balcony off the side so you can look at the ocean and—”

“Holden.”

He’d begun pacing back and forth, arms still waving. “We should go for a month. Maybe two! I hear some people, they live on these ships—mostly older people, but whatever. They just go on one cruise after another, they don’t even have a permanent address, but with the net, they can still pay their bills or their insurance or taxes or whatever it is that people have to do even if they’re not really living anywhere, so—”

“Holden, stop, listen to—”

He took both her hands in his and brought Catherine to her feet. “What do you think? I know there’s probably stuff you have to deal with, wrap things up, but couldn’t you get someone else to do that? I bet Reece would do it. He can figure out all that shit! That would allow us to get away sooner.”

Holden gave his mother a short, abrupt hug, then ran down the hall to his bedroom, shouting the whole way.

“I’ve only got one bag! I’ll need to borrow one, maybe two. We’ll have to go back to your place and get lots of suitcases. Bring as much stuff as you want because we don’t know how long we’ll be gone.” He paused a second, thinking of something. “Will they have laundry facilities? On the ship? And food! Don’t they have these like twenty-four-hour buffets where you can eat your face off?”

He had all the drawers of his dresser open and was tossing socks and underwear onto his unmade bed. He stopped, briefly, looking at what he’d selected, then turned to his mother and asked, “What do you think the weather will be like? If it’s mostly hot, I’ll want shorts and tees, but if it’s a long cruise we’ll be hitting all kinds of weather, and—”

“Holden!”

He froze, stared at her wide-eyed.

“Holden, please, just . . . stop. What have you been taking?”