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“You look like something the cat dragged in.”

“Thanks.”

She crossed the floor in six steps. She took my face in both hands and turned it left, then right, examining the eggplant bruise along my jaw, the cut in my eyebrow, the raw red rings around my wrists. Her thumbs shook.

“Who did this?” she said.

“Mom—”

“I will kill him.”

“He’s already in custody.”

“I will kill him, Alexander.”

“I know you will.” I put my hands over hers. “I love you.”

She looked at me. Then, for the first time in twenty-six years, my mother burst into tears.

She did it quietly, in the ladylike way she does everything, with her chin up and her mouth pressed flat. But they poured down her face. She didn’t wipe them. She pulled me into her arms and held me against her chest so hard I couldn’t breathe.

“Don’t you ever,” she said, into my hair. “Don’t you ever go out at night and not tell me. Don’t you ever let a stranger take you. Do you hear me? I would have died. I would have lain down in the road.”

“I know, Mom. I’m sorry.”

“You have a father who would burn down a city.”

“I know.”

“You have a sister who cried herself sick.”

“Hey!” said Jenny, from the doorway, sniffling. “I didn’t cry sick. I cried normal.”

“You cried for six hours.”

“It was normal. “

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It came out wet and hiccupy and I clutched my mother’s coat and felt her hand stroking the back of my head. The room smelled of antiseptic and rain and Chanel No. 5. I hadn’t known how badly I needed it.

When she finally let me go, she was composed again, the tears dried, her mascara only slightly smeared.

“Now,” she said. “Who is that in the bed?”

I’d known this was coming. I’d known since the ambulance. I had practiced a speech for six hours at the side of a bed, with a bag of pretzels, and I’d made it careful and clever and full of hedges.

I opened my mouth and said, “Mom, honestly, I have something to tell you.”

She went very still.

“Sit down,” I said.

“I’ll stand.”

“It’s a lot.”

“I am standing, Alexander.”

I looked at Jenny. She looked back at me, wide-eyed, and gave me a tiny, fierce thumbs-up behind my mother’s back.