The blade clattered into the sink. She stormed out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. The TV’s snowstorm sustained the silence after Henry’s slip of the tongue, as if to make him dwell on his mistake. As if he hadn’t spent half a decade wallowing in the shame of what he’d done, so the last five years hadn’t been fifty. His molars started grinding to fill his skull with another noise, a different thrum, one that wasn’t quite loud enough to wash out his mental pleading and whining or, now, the knock knock on the front door.

Henry lasered a look that was meant to send Junior to the door, but the boy was absorbed in fastening a lid to the Lego container.

“Who is it?” Henry yelled.

No answer. Peeling himself off the couch, he imagined gripping the jelly jar and driving its rim square into Sandi’s front teeth. The impulse was so great and his hate so large that—to keep himself out of trouble—he backhanded a clearing among the coffee table’s debris to leave this potential weapon. The toilet flushed. Michelle came out, clambering her shorts up, humping over and barricading herself between Henry and the front door, saying move already, christ almighty.

On the front step was a man in white overalls, a white T-shirt, and white paint splattered past his wrists. A grin for Michelle vanished when he noticed Henry, who now crossed his arms to bloat the meat of his forearms. In the yard, he’d avoided eye contact at all costs, but here, in his own home, he was alpha.

Michelle said it was cool, she fucking got it, then shoved Henry aside.

Seemed if Henry wasn’t screwing things up, he was getting in her way, and so to spare them all yet another showdown, he shuffled off to go stare at the pot of water, to make it boil. Over the hiss of gas and the water’s simmer, he heard Michelle thank the painter. She told him to come on, relax. Ought to know she were good for it by now, like. Her hand stuffed itself into the hoodie’s pocket, where it remained after she shut the door and returned to the stove, making a show of ignoring Henry.