“You know what? I’m just going to stop this speculation in its tracks. NO. Joe is a complicated kid navigating a difficult landscape. And he is just hitting puberty. But he is also one of the most decent humans on the planet. He is not asking girls for nude photos of themselves.”

“You’re right, of course you’re right.”

“I’m sorry I clipped you. I just so totally believe in him. Even if I wind up being interviewed. I mean, when he turns out to be the Fox River Killer. And I’ll be saying he was such a good, quiet boy.”

“Joe!?” Neale goes in the back door first and shouts up the staircase.

“In my room.” A muffled shout. “Kiera’s here.”

“Are they doing homework?” Cate lies next to Neale on the kitchen floor, at the ready with a wrench, a plumber’s snake, a plastic tub, a rag that was recently a T-shirt.

“They don’t really give homework anymore. The kids are too busy with their after-school activities. Joe has band practice until five, three times a week. And then they’re too exhausted. Their parents are exhausted, too. Everyone goes around in a stupor.” Neale’s voice is deadened by resignation, also by coming from inside a small cabinet. She comes out with a fairly large smear of troublingly colorful plumbing gunk across her forehead, in her hair.

Cate says, “Maybe you should be doing something to give yourself a little quality time. I’m thinking crystal meth.”

“Can you hand me the rag?”

“I saw this documentary and there was this toothless mother in front of a farmhouse and she was saying, ‘I get the kids off on the school bus and then I put the baby down for her nap and then it’s my me time, when I do my meth.’ ”

Joe moves into the kitchen stealthily, startling them both when he says, “Good thing I was upstairs when you needed help with that. Hey, Cate.” He says this without making eye contact. He and Cate both hate eye contact. Also hugging. They stick with fist bumps. They are close in their own way. She was there when he was born. Not having gotten it together to have a kid of her own, she mooches a little of him off Neale. She’s tried to occupy a place somewhere between parent and friend and aunt. Nondisciplinary like a friend. Older, with good advice at the ready, but not the aunt whose crepey, powdered cheek he’s required to kiss. And after Neale’s marriage was over and Joe’s father was off to India, Cate tried to be around even more. But as he heads into adolescence he has started building in a little distance.

“What’s up?” Neale asks him.