Marianne looked straight ahead and said nothing. It would be over soon, she told herself. Everyone would go to their room and then it would be quiet. They just had to make it home. She pictured Sarah and Lucas telling stories to each other like they used to, holding secret meetings under the kitchen table, cutting dragons and pterodactyls out of construction paper.

There was a click in the backseat, and Marianne felt a rush of air. Sarah had opened the car door; it swung into the road, the asphalt rushing underneath in a blur. Her seat belt was undone and she had one leg out, ready to jump.

“What are you doing?” Marianne screamed. “Pull over! Pull over!” Richard swung into the breakdown lane, and as soon as they stopped, Sarah was out of the car, running down the street, and Marianne was after her, reaching out with her arms, trying to catch her daughter before she got too far away.

312.30—Impulse-Control Disorder. Dr. Snow marked the chart and switched Lucas to Seroquel. She said, “It should calm things down a bit.” She also said, “Look for ways to help each other.”

Richard and Marianne found this difficult, because in truth they blamed each other. Marianne felt Richard troubled Lucas more by confronting him, and Richard felt that she made their son worse by giving in. Every night after the children had gone to bed, they argued, both of them feeling that they had somehow been conned.

They slept on the outside corners of their mattress, not touching, the blankets shifting back and forth. In the morning Marianne crushed Lucas’s pills into orange juice and Richard read the paper and tried to ignore the howling in the yard.

“One of these days I’m going to kill that cat.”

Something smelled bad in the hallway. It reminded Marianne of the summer, when a squirrel had crawled into the wall by the stairs and died. They’d all held their breath going down the steps until it rotted away. Sometimes she still held her breath when she crossed the spot. Sometimes she thought about the skeleton, frozen in the wall.

Marianne started cleaning. She bought extra Pine-Sol and Bon Ami and went to work, scrubbing down the wallpaper, dusting books. The smell dimmed but continued to hover near Lucas’s room. Marianne hesitated at the door. She didn’t want to go inside. Instead she disinfected the frame, the doorknob, the molding in the corner. She was spreading rug cleaner over the carpet when Lucas emerged. It was the middle of the day, and he still had his pajamas on. Tiny rockets and spaceships blasted across the flannel. The top was too small for him, the bottoms ending far above his ankles.

“What’re you doing?”

“I’m trying to get rid of that smell.”

“I don’t smell anything.”

With the door ajar it was stronger. The stench was behind him, coming from the room.