For the next year, he’d flown into a rage at the drop of a hat, always with strangers, and always in public places. The demon within him craved public spectacle but cowered from unleashing itself on those closest to him. The why of it all never came out, even during his years of therapy. Truth be told, he didn’t care. He was just glad he never hurt his family or friends. He could live with breaking a strange man’s nose. At least he’d never have to see him sitting across the Christmas dinner table.

He’d scrapped with people for little to no reason in bars, a bowling alley, parked at a stop sign, and even a supermarket one morning. The arrest didn’t come until his fourth outburst, when no one was around to explain his situation and hope the other person would let it slide.

Luckily for him, the charges on his first and only arrest were dropped, but not until he agreed to anger management and counseling. The man whom he’d doubled over with a jab to the solar plexus – all for having the misfortune to have given a short tap on his horn when Andrew spaced out at a stop sign – had lost his wife to cancer several years earlier. He understood Andrew’s fury and wished him and Kate the best. At the time, Andrew wanted to wipe that condescending look right off his face. Hell, he wanted to wipe every look off everyone’s face.

A dog barked in the dark. Andrew listened out for running paws. He’d been chased more than once by a shepherd mix on Bentley Road. Tonight, he was looking forward to beating it in a footrace again.

The dog in the dark was all bark, no chase.

No chemo. No chemo. No chemo.

Therapy was a waste. The damn shrink kept asking about his relationship with his father, as if that had anything to do with what was going on with Kate. Andrew knew damn well what his issues were. The medication he was prescribed made him too drowsy to function, so there went that.

Anger management seemed an equal waste of time, until he met up with one of his fellow hotheads (that’s what they liked to call themselves) at a diner after their weekly meeting. Her name was Sharon, and this was her third round of anger management. She was in it this time for throwing a chair into an aquarium at a pet store because one of the workers had called her ma’am. She had been only thirty-five at the time, and in her opinion, the furthest fucking thing from a ma’am. She hadn’t intended to hit the bewildered pet store worker in his blue smock. She just wanted to see him struggle to save all the fish, knees crunching the pebbled glass.