Mr. Bell draped his suit jacket on a chair and loosened his tie. His case had been postponed, he said, which was why he was home early. He asked me some polite questions about my mother, where we lived, and so forth, and then the three of us talked about the campaign. He stood with his feet apart like a sheriff in a Western, rotating an invisible ball in his hands to make his points. He had a lot of points to make. Jack elaborated on whatever his father said, and I could see that underneath, he was full of admiration. Even if they didn’t give it a second thought, the time they’d spent together was obvious. Correction. The time his father had spent with him. Because let’s face it, children are stuck in one place, taking whatever comes. It was Jack’s father who had bothered to be there all along, so that now he could clap his son on the back in that fake hearty way and Jack could shrug off his hand. That was a true father.

Having changed, Mr. Bell went out to Office Depot for paper and print cartridges—so he informed his son, who crossed his eyes to let me know what he thought about that level of detail.

“Your father’s so nice.” For some reason Jack and I always spent our time in the kitchen. When we weren’t looking at something together at the breakfast bar, Jack liked to stand with his back against the counter, as he was doing now.

“My father’s a pain.”

“Yeah, right.”

Sheepish smile. “Sometimes.”

“What happened between your parents? If you want to talk about it.”

“They split up. I was ten. My sister was already in college.”

“Why did they split up?”

“ ‘Irretrievable breakdown.’ I used to put my headphones on at night when they were arguing. Apparently my father wasn’t exciting enough for her. My mother’s with someone more exciting now.” He caught sight of my face. “Don’t worry. I’m used to it. Back then all I wanted was for them to get back together. I tried everything I could think of.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I broke my leg jumping off the porch roof.”

“Don’t tell me you did that on purpose!”

He grinned. “Not really. But after that we were together every weekend for a while. Then the summer after seventh grade I ran away from camp with Freddy Cook. We were in the woods all night before they found us. We said we were trying out our survival skills, but my parents didn’t buy it. That’s when we went into family therapy.”

I nodded, smug because we had never had to go to family therapy. Then I remembered that to go to family therapy you have to have a family.