He came over, pulled out a chair, and sat down across from me. He had that look of feigned bewilderment, as if to say, “What could you possibly want to speak to me about?”

I said, “You look a bit rough this morning.”

He swallowed. “I’m good. Just a bit tired is all.”

“What did you do last night?”

“Hung out here. Had a couple of friends over.”

“What’d you do?”

Paul hesitated. “Uh, just, I don’t know, watched some movies, played video games.”

“What do you think the chances are, if I go look out back between the garage and the fence, that there’s still a six-pack there?”

“Huh?”

“Shall we go look? I know it was there yesterday afternoon, and I have a pretty good idea who left it there, and I’m betting it’s gone.”

Paul looked at the table. “It’s gone.”

“And I’ll bet most of it’s been thrown up or pissed away by now,” I said.

Paul swallowed again. No denials there.

“You got a fake ID?” I asked.

Paul feigned indignation. “Oh my God. Don’t you trust me?”

“Of course not. You’re a teenager.” I took a shot in the dark. “Let’s see the ID.”

Paul sighed, took his wallet from his back pocket, opened it up, tossed a piece of plastic across the table at me. It was a reasonably good facsimile, as long as you didn’t look too closely, of a driver’s license, with Paul’s picture on it. It would have to be pretty dark in a bar to fool anyone with.

“This says you’re twenty-one,” I said. “You’re barely shaving.”

“I shaved two days ago.”

“Let me guess. You look too young to fool many people with this, so you get your older friends, Trevor Wylie included, to buy your beer for you.”

Paul said nothing. I slipped the fake ID into my pocket.

“Jeez, Dad, you know what I had to pay Trevor for that?”

“No, what?”

Paul decided it was better not saying. I said, “Trevor’s what, four or five years older than you? And he’s your buddy?”

“He’s okay.”

“That kid’s using you, being nice to you, buying your beer for you, to get close to your sister.” I paused, got very serious. “Don’t let people use you to hurt your family.”

For a moment, Paul’s eyes looked scared. “He wouldn’t hurt anybody. He just likes Angie, that’s all.”

“You better hope so,” I said.

“And jeez, why are you coming down so hard on me about this? You didn’t get this way with Angie.”

“Angie wasn’t drinking when she was sixteen,” I said.

Now it was Paul’s turn to smile. “Yeah, right. I’ve got so much shit on her, you’ve got no idea.”