This time, talking wasn’t any easier, but far more necessary. The two of them sat on opposite sides of his mother’s floral couch together, father and son sitting in the dark living room, lightless since the lamp had been broken in the chaos of the attempted robbery. There they discussed the elephant in the room that they had been ignoring for the past three years. They both admitted to feeling helpless over what to do and guilty because their inaction left Dustin’s mother to do the heavy lifting when it came to Nicholas’s drug problem. The issues had started the August before Dustin started high school, when he arrived home from robotics camp to find out that Nicholas had gotten busted with drugs at the Jewish summer camp where he had been working as a counselor. His parents sat Dustin down and told him that they’d checked Nicholas into rehab, though at the time they were both in the denial phase and didn’t believe their son was an actual addict, just “needed to get back on track.” But less than a year later the story changed completely and Dustin realized that things were escalating at an alarming rate.

Now it had been going on for almost four years with no sign of improvement and had become common knowledge, whispered about behind their backs: “Oh them? Well, the parents are divorced, Jewish, and get this, they have an adopted black son who is incredibly accomplished academically while the older son, the biological child, is a drug addict.”

Clearly tonight’s incident meant it was time for Nicholas to go to rehab again, his fourth go-around. Dustin told his dad that from what he had read online, twenty-eight-day rehab treatment programs weren’t effective for long-term results and to get better ones, a three-month stay was needed. His father agreed but explained the huge financial cost of rehab. Insurance paid for some, but the good places, the places where people in their family’s tax bracket sent their children to kick the habit, didn’t usually take insurance for any stay longer than a month. His father explained he had a new wife to consider, and that he’d happily spend his retirement savings if he believed for one second that his eldest son would come out of rehab and stay clean forever.