“Yes, you do. And I do. We’re grown up now, Eddie. We can take what’s coming to us. Perhaps it won’t be too bad. Perhaps, a long time from now, we can see each other again.” She moved closer, twined her hand in his. She gazed at him in a wholly new way, Eddie saw, calm and unafraid and utterly loving. A convulsion seized Eddie; he thought he was going to be sick. The thought of the cops, the questionings, the ordeal of being charged and condemned and put away ran through his mind like a leaping fire.

“You must have a fever,” he said to her. “You’re out of your head. Crazy.”

“No, I’m not. I’ve just got over being sort of crazy, I guess. I thought I could run away, leave everything. Leave everything I’d done, what I’d been. When you didn’t come back I panicked; I tried to hitch a ride on the highway. And then I saw”—her voice sharpened—“I saw what my whole life would be from then on. Just running. And not really getting away at all.”

He argued with her. But nothing moved her or changed her. And finally, in some way Eddie couldn’t comprehend, some of her assurance and the peaceful acceptance transferred themselves to him. He didn’t try to fool himself about the actual situation. It was going to be tough; God, was it going to be tough! But since they’d be turning themselves in, confessing, perhaps there would be something to look forward to a long time from now. With everything wiped clean, paid up, no need to run and hide.

He lay down close to her, and she stroked his hair and murmured to him. It seemed then to Eddie that the years he had known with Skip, along with Skip’s values and Skip’s outlook on life, dropped completely away so that for the first time he was really himself.

Eddie’s mother had spent a wretched, sleepless, and tearful night. In the early dawn she arose, taking care not to wake her snoring husband, and went out to the kitchen. In the back of a cupboard, hidden from sight, was a box in which she had stored some mementos of Eddie’s growing up—school cards and various items of correspondence garnered through the years. Some she’d kept to reassure herself, good grades, encouraging notes from teachers. Other bits she’d retained to worry and puzzle over.

During the night she had decided, in view of the circumstances, to burn all of this material. In some way, in the future, something in it might be damaging to her son.

She took the box to the sink, brought matches from the stove, and then began to burn the cards and notes, one by one.