“Okay, then. Stay here. I’m going to bring you a cold pack. You’re going to ice that hand for fifteen minutes and get ahold of yourself before coming inside. But first, you’re going to bring in that ladder from the side yard. Hang it on these hooks by the time I get back.”

He nods.

Before leaving him, I ask once more, “Anything else you want to tell me?”

He shakes his head.

I leave my son to lick his wounds, and I wonder if he knows I know he’s lying.

30.

Why in the world would Jonah lie to me?

He claims to have heard that pregnancy bullshit the night before Nick died—but I didn’t feed Nick that lie until morning. Maybe the forensic pathologists and medical examiner got it all wrong. Maybe Nick was only two days dead when I found him. But no, the consensus was three days. Everyone at the funeral seemed to have accepted that as fact.

I do not press for details when I deliver the cold pack, because there’s a damn party at my house. I should be enjoying it. Just when that starts to feel attainable, though, I run into Ray, who pulls me aside.

“Can we bury the hatchet later?” I ask him. “This crowd, you know. These people.”

“No, man. I think we should talk.”

“I can’t do this now.”

“You can’t not do this, Bobby. It’s serious.” He leans close and whispers, “It’s about Simone.”

The name almost doesn’t register, so foreign does it sound coming out of Ray’s mouth. “My office manager Simone?”

“Yeah. Her.”

“Okay, fine.” I lead Ray outside. We take a seat on a pair of woven pool chairs. From this angle, looking through a wall of glass at the cocktail hour unfolding in my own house, it’s as though I’m watching animals in a cage, or live theater on mute. “What about Simone?”

“She’s a problem, Bobby.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s trouble. I straightened her out, but you need to keep an eye on her, man. I’m serious.”

“What do you mean, you straightened her out?”

“She called me,” he whispers, “about the party. She invited me and then got weird, saying she knew we were old friends.”

“Yeah, I told her that.”

“Fine, but she made it sound like she had some inside info. Whatever. And I said, yeah, we go back to the beginning, and I don’t know—I guess that made her trust me or something. She sounded weird, I’m not going to lie.”

“And then?”

“That was the end of it. I said, yeah, we’ll try to be here. I was still pissed at you and, dude, you should have called me yourself. What the fuck?”

“Come on, Ray.”

“It was rude. So anyway, that night she called me again.”

“At home?”