Billy, shell-shocked by his father’s behavior, stayed on at Mary Ann’s. He’d called his grandmother, and spoken briefly to his mother, but he wouldn’t go home. He didn’t even want to go back to Pastor Andrés: he thought the minister shared the blame in Frank Zamar’s death because of the pressure he’d put on Zamar to back out of his contract with By-Smart.

The main reason Billy wouldn’t leave Mary Ann’s, though, was because he didn’t have the energy to pack up and move one more time. He’d been at the pastor’s, he’d been at Josie’s, and then at Mary Ann’s, all in the last ten days. He was too upset to organize himself mentally into another move—and my coach definitely liked having him living in the apartment with her. Now that he wasn’t hiding, he walked the dog three or four times a day, and he brought all his intensity to studying Latin with her. Its rules, its complex grammar, seemed to be a haven for him right now, a place of purity, regularity.

On Tuesday, in Lotty’s apartment, he tried to explain some of that to me, and some of his reluctance to see his family again. “I love them all, maybe not Dad, at least, I find it hard to forgive him for killing April’s dad and Mr. Zamar—and even if Freddy and Bron made the plant burn down, I think it was really because of Aunt Jacqui, and—and Dad, that Mr. Zamar is dead. I even love Mom, and, of course, my grandparents, they’re great people, they really are, but—but I think they’re shortsighted.”

He curled his hands in Peppy’s fur and spoke to her, not to me. “It’s funny, they have such a big vision for the company, how to make it an international giant, but the only people they really recognize as—as human—are themselves. They can’t see that Josie is a person, and her family, and all the people who work in South Chicago. If someone wasn’t born a Bysen, they don’t count. If they are Bysens, it doesn’t matter what they do, because they’re part of the family. Like Grandma, she is truly against abortion in every way, she gives tons of money to antiabortion groups, but when Candy, when my sister, got pregnant, Grandma whisked her off to a clinic—they were mad at Candy, but Grandma got her an abortion that they’d never let Josie have, not that Josie’s pregnant.” He turned beet red. “We—we did listen to what you said, about—well, being careful—but it’s just an example of what I mean about how my family sees the world.”

“Your grandfather wants to talk to you. If we did it in my office, would you come?”