Carter passed the puck just as he got checked. No penalty whistle blew.

“He want to go pro?” James asked.

Duane shrugged one shoulder. “Which one of them down there doesn’t? But he may actually have a shot…and I’m not just saying it ’cause I’m his old man.”

James chuckled at that. “Of course not.”

“Seriously. There’ve been guys calling about him. Scouts. But who knows.”

Who knew about anything anymore, James thought. Even the things he thought were guaranteed didn’t seem so etched in stone anymore. “I’m going to see Travis.”

“I figured you would.” Duane shook his head. “He’s not the guy you remember, Jimmy. He’s not little Travis the water boy no more. He ain’t ‘Toad.’ No sir. He’s just been getting weirder and weirder and weirder, especially in the last couple years. Some folks could barely tolerate it any more. Ol’ man Riley over at the pharmacy has been all over my tail to do something about it. You can believe I’m taking some heat here for what happened.”

Carter, in possession of the puck once again, drove the black disc into the net.

“Atta boy, Carter!” Duane yelled.

“I don’t get it,” James said. “What do you mean? How’s he so different from before. I mean, OK, he’s Travis, we all know that—”

“Well, where do you want to start?” A troubling hint of irritation edged Duane’s tone. “How about he got to wearing a…what do you call those little dresses ballet girls wear?”

“A tutu?”

“Right. He’d put on a pink one of them things in the middle of the night, didn’t matter—freeze-your-pants-off-cold-dead-of-winter—and go prancing down Main Street. Middle of the night twirling around like a fairy princess while we’re all asleep. It could be twenty below.” Duane shook his head. “One screw at a time his whole head’s come loose.”

“His wardrobe was always a little different. We all knew that.”

Duane let out a grunt of disbelief. “Are you hearing me? Yes, we tolerated the fact that he didn’t bathe much and dressed like a moron. This ain’t that.”

James just stared, unable to reconcile the person Duane was describing with the person James knew Travis to be.

“Look, I can’t talk about this right now, just makes me sick. It’s too raw. We shoulda done something for him when we had a chance, and we didn’t. We thought it was endearing. Now what’s done is done, and it can’t be undone. There’s no good part to this story, Jim. Not for Toad, not for any of us.”

James traveled through is memories. Travis was endearing. Gentle. Sweet. Thoughtful. Childlike in mind if not in body. We shoulda done something for him. Duane’s words ricocheted in James’s mind. What should they have done for Travis? He wasn’t broken, just mentally challenged—just different. How could his innocent quirks and peculiarities have morphed into something dangerous and deadly?

…Unless he’d been driven to it.

4

Skyscrapers jutted into the skyline as the city of Bishop came into view. James’s heartbeat kicked it up a notch. By nature, not much made him nervous, but today he was terrified of what he might discover. Believing Travis’s innocence came easy, even with the sight of the devastated farmhouse, but what would James do if Travis confessed right here? Right now. To James’s face. The implications touched his heart, burrowed into his mind. He automatically reached out for the One he used to lean on, before he remembered he’d given up on God. His soul cried at the emptiness within.