She began to walk away and then stopped and turned on her high heels. “Oh, Hutch, it’s so weird that there is another boy named Hutchinson from your hometown.”

He laughed and placed his finger on a line in the history book, so he could look up at Mother. “No, I’m it.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said, and glanced at me. “The one and only.”

“Well, that’s weird, because I wouldn’t have taken you for the type to have spent a month in jail. There is no way you are that same boy.” She pushed her hair off her forehead, although it had so much hair spray that there was no way it needed smoothing. She glanced at me.

“Mother,” I said, “what are you talking about?”

She walked toward us and sat in a chair. “I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to just drop that like a bomb. I thought surely it was another boy. I’m … sorry.”

“No, ma’am, sure enough that was me. I was fourteen. It’s actually a pretty terrible story, one I don’t usually like to remember or talk about.”

She nodded. “I understand.” Mother then left Hutch and me there in the backyard facing each other over an iron table and history books.

Hutch stared at me for the longest time while this blackness of dread spread inside me, as if the news were an oil spill in water. “It’s not what it sounds like,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

“My God, how did she know? The records have been sealed for years.”

“So … it’s true?” My heart sped; my mouth was an arid desert of fear.

“Ellie …”

I stood. “Seriously? She’s right? And you never told me? Are you kidding me?”

“Sit down and listen, please. I’ll tell you the entire story.”

I stayed standing. “I’m listening, Hutch. Go ahead.”

He stood with me, taking my hands. “Sit down.”

When we once again faced each other over our notes and class papers, he did tell me the story. A terrible story that had once changed him and then changed us.

“Ellie,” he said, regretful but resolute, “I am so sorry I never told you about this story. It’s terrible, and in trying to forget it ever happened, I pretend it never happened.”

“That doesn’t work,” I said. “Pretending something didn’t happen doesn’t work.”

“I know, and I should have told you. But when you are finally where you want to be, you try to forget where you were.”

“What happened, Hutch?”