‘He’d drop it if he knew it’d keep you safe.’

I hold my hand out for the joint. ‘I’m not telling him.’

‘I don’t see any other way.’

I don’t either. But I have a few more days to think of one, and Charlie’s making me anxious. I change the topic. ‘Remember the summer Dad decided we had to learn about physics?’

‘Bread always lands butter side down?’

Which makes me laugh. ‘That is not a law of physics.’

‘Pretty sure it is.’

‘You don’t remember him explaining the laws of motion?’

‘I really don’t.’ He smiles at me. ‘And if this is your best stoned riffing, I’m cutting you off.’

‘So funny. Dad was teaching a grade ten physics class, which meant our ignorance was suddenly outrageous. Nothing?’ He shakes his head. ‘It’s amazing how much you’ve blocked.’

‘My superpower,’ he says.

‘First law of motion: Everything stays in its state of rest or moving straight ahead, except when it’s compelled to change its state by another force. Third: For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Second one’s not relevant right now.’

‘I don’t see how any of them are relevant right now.’

I sigh. ‘Charlie, you interfered with the motion of things, the way things were supposed to go, when you ran Skye off the road. She was moving somewhere, going to her child. She was thrown off course and now Beau’s stuck somewhere he shouldn’t be, and a woman and a baby are dead.’

‘You know what? The car accident is good for Doyle. If it wasn’t for that, Mark would storm into the commune with his crew and Doyle wouldn’t have any leverage to stop him. But now he can use you.’ He sits forward. ‘And we can use Mark’s work.’

But I’m not done explaining the laws to him. ‘We changed Skye’s course, the course, some action of the universe. There has to be a reaction to that, equal in force. Do you know what I mean?’

He pulls on the joint, considers the stars.

‘Charlie?’

‘Because it’s not like Doyle cares that some chick had a car crash. But now she’s tied to you, and you’re tied to Mark. So when you think about it, this all circles around you.’

‘No, listen. We – you, mostly – caused something to veer from its natural trajectory. And now we need to do something to put everything back on its right track.’ I stop, struck by an idea. ‘It’s like the cyclone. Some force flicked it in a different direction and now a whole city has been destroyed. Because –’ But I don’t know who to blame for that, or exactly how it relates to our driving – though I’m sure there’s a connection.

This seems to strike a chord with him. ‘Karma. There needs to be a right to balance a wrong.’

‘Karma? What?’ I can’t follow our conversation anymore. I don’t smoke often and I’ve never found myself in such a convoluted mental mess. But somewhere in my brain I’m clear on two things: I have to talk my husband out of doing his job, and Dad was right when he said the third law was the one you had to look out for. For every action there’s a reaction. Nothing and no one escapes that fact.