Page 45 of Thin Ice

"Liam?" Small. "Are you still there?"

"I'm here. We're coming. My mom and me. Fifteen minutes."

"You don't have to — "

"Alex. We're coming."

"Thank you."

"It's going to be okay."

I hung up. My mom drove. Neither of us spoke for a full minute. The lake road ran flat along the water, the Point growing larger through the windshield.

"His father?" she said finally.

"Yeah."

"How bad?"

"He kicked him out because he's with me."

Her hands tightened on the wheel.

"That man," she said, low and even and absolutely final, "is going to have to answer for that someday. And I hope I'm in the room."

That was all she said. She didn't say that's terrible or I'm so sorry.

***

Peninsula Point looked different from the driveway.

The house was big and stone and cold, wreaths on the gates, a path shoveled to the same width all the way to a front door that looked like it had never been opened in a hurry.

Alex was sitting on the steps with his duffel beside him and my hoodie on. His face was red from the cold or from crying or both, and when our car pulled into the driveway, he stood up. My mom's twelve-year-old car in front of a house with a three-car garage. He stood there looking at us as if he wasn't sure we were real.

The look on his face was one that would live in me for the rest of my life. Empty and hopeless.

I was out of the car before it stopped.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey."

I didn't ask what happened. I didn't ask if he was okay. I put my arms around him and he dropped the duffel and put his face into my neck and his shoulders started shaking, and I held him on the front steps of his father's house while the stone and the glass watched, and my mom sat in the car with the engine running and let us have it.

A minute. Maybe two. His breath going ragged against my collar. His hands fisted in the back of my jacket. And the cold didn't exist, and the house didn't exist, and the man inside it didn't exist. Just him shaking and me holding.

"Come on," I said. "Let's go home."

He pulled back. Wiped his face with the heel of his hand. Nodded.

I picked up the duffel bag and put it in the trunk. He got in the back seat. I got in the front. My mom looked at him in the rearview, and what she said was:

"Are you hungry?"

He almost laughed. It came out closer to a breath. "Yeah. Actually."

"Good. There's chili at home. And I bought enough ham to feed a small army for the holiday." She put the car in reverse. "Seatbelt."