Dad shook his head. “I would do anything to protect you”—he almost glanced outside, having proved the point mere minutes ago—“but the best way to do that is to let you make your own mistakes. A mistake-proof life is not worth living.”

“So I just let it go?”

“For now, yes. Brad knows you reached out—Kitty will tell him. I e-mailed him too. If he wants to reach back, he will.”

Myron flashed to another memory: Brad, age seven, getting bullied at sleepaway camp. Myron remembered Brad just sitting out by the old softball field by himself. Brad had made the last out and the bullies had taunted en masse. Myron tried to sit with him but Brad just kept crying and telling Myron to go away. It was one of those times you feel so helpless you’d kill to make the pain go away. He remembered another time, when the entire Bolitar family went to Miami during the February school break. He and Brad shared a hotel room, and one night, after a fun-filled day at the Parrot Jungle, Myron asked him about school and Brad broke down and cried and said that he hated it and had no friends and it broke Myron’s heart in about a thousand places. The next day, sitting out by the pool, Myron asked Dad what he should do about it. His father’s advice had been simple: “Don’t raise it. Don’t make him sad now. Just let him enjoy his vacation.”

Brad had been gawky, awkward, a later bloomer. Or maybe it had just been growing up behind Myron.

“I thought you wanted us to reconcile,” Myron said.

“I do. But you can’t force it. Give them room.”

His father was still breathing hard from the earlier altercation. There was no reason to get him all upset now. It could wait until the morning. But then: “Kitty is using drugs,” Myron said.

Dad raised an eyebrow. “You know this?”

“Yes.”

Dad rubbed his chin and considered this new development. Then: “You still need to leave them alone.”

“Are you serious?”

“Did you know that at one point your mother was addicted to painkillers?”

Myron said nothing, stunned.

“It’s getting late,” Dad said. He started to get up from the couch. “You okay?”

“Wait, you’re just going to drop this bomb on me and walk away?”

“It wasn’t a big deal. That’s my point. We worked it out.”

Myron didn’t know what to say. He also wondered what Dad would make of it if he told him about Kitty’s sex act in the nightclub, and man, he hoped that Dad wouldn’t use another Mom-did-same analogy on that one.

Give it a rest for the night, Myron thought. No reason to do anything hasty. There will be nothing new until daylight. They heard a car pull into the driveway and then the sound of a car door slamming shut.