“No, she’s not coming,” Elliot says, and something in his tone must tell her not to ask any more questions, because Alice is not brought up again until after the Thanksgiving meal. He and his parents have eaten nearly an entire turkey between the three of them, along with most of a large porcelain bowl full of sweet potatoes that Elliot notices are not actually sweet this year but instead taste like earth with a hint of nutmeg. Still, he eats two servings, along with three buttered rolls, a mountain of green bean casserole, and a portion of glazed ham that would have satisfied an entire table of children. He is sleepy and morose and uncomfortably full when his mother directs him to the living room couch and sits down beside him. “Okay,” she says. “Where’s Alice?”

Caught off guard, Elliot cannot help but begin to cry. It is the first time he’s shared his grief with anyone, and the fact that it is his mother makes him return to his boyhood, when something as small as a splinter would send him running into her arms. “I had a dream,” he begins, and then explains the rest. As he talks, he wonders if his stepfather is somewhere nearby, listening. While his mother and Roy were setting the table, he’d snuck into Roy’s study to confront the mallard. He hadn’t intended to do anything—he just wanted to look at it—but the sight of the mallard enraged him. He’d grabbed the mallard and gone to the yard, where he’d hurled it over the fence. There was a satisfying plop as it landed in the McBrides’ swimming pool. His mother had found him just moments after, standing by the fence. When she asked what he was doing he told her he was checking to see if a carving he’d done as a boy was still in the fence. “Well, is it?” she’d asked. He’d frozen, unsure of how to answer. “No,” he’d said. “It’s gone.”

When he finishes explaining about Alice—about the dream and the mallard and Ramona—his mother begins to laugh. “I’m sorry,” she says, still laughing. “I just can’t help it. You blame Roy? And his avian sculpture?”

“Yes,” he says, only now realizing that it’s the truth. “I do.”

“All right,” his mother says, and pats his knee as if he is once again just a young boy with a boo-boo. “All right. I won’t take that from you.”

“You’re making it sound like there’s something I’m not accepting.”

“You were dreaming,” she says, her tone suddenly serious. “You were asleep, Elliot. Who could blame you for something you did while you were sleeping?”

“I left bruises on her neck. She’s terrified of me.”

“Love isn’t a china doll,” she says. “It’s a monster. If it was that easy to get out of it, we’d all be alone.”

“You’re saying she never loved me.”

“Not that she never loved you, but that maybe she hasn’t for a while. That’s all. I know it hurts.” She pats his leg again.