“So go ahead, Jack, ask her.”

“Let’s just eat.” Jack smiled at Dan. “Danny, your father says you’re swimming. What’s your best stroke?”

But Pat was past the point of safe return. “Go ahead, Agent Hurley. Go ahead and ask my wife what you wanted to ask her.”

“Let it go, Pat.”

Anne put down the serving spoon. She realized they had forgotten to say grace in front of company. “What are we talking about?”

“It’s nothing, Anne.” Jack tried to wave it away with his fork. “Let’s just eat.”

“He wants what’s left of your mother’s money.”

Anne looked at Pat. He’s shitfaced. And now my sister is going to hear about it. That upset her more than anything. “Okay, I’ll talk to Catherine,” she said quietly.

“Thank you, Anne.”

“Good.” Pat stabbed the chicken with his fork. “And tell J. Edgar fucking Hoover to pay for your fucking kids’ education.”

Jack stood up and whispered an apology to Anne and Dan. He put on his jacket and walked out the door to his black government car.

Dan lost his appetite. He sucked on his pinched finger. It was that stupid table. That set him off. His father served him a potato like nothing had happened. Unable to process his fear of his father, it channeled into fury at his mother. Her fucking dinner, her idea to sit at this table. She started this shit. He ran back to his room.

Anne shook her head and returned to the kitchen. Seconds later she was crying.

Slashing and biting through the tasteless chicken, Pat Malone sat alone at the head of his table. When he heard his wife crying, he stopped chewing and blinked slowly. Then he threw his plate across the room, missing the Waterford cabinet, the chicken landing on the beige carpet with hardly a sound.

And so he sat there. Burning down the house in his thoughts.

October 23

[ OCTOBER 23 ]

“The amazing thing, gentlemen, about Schlieffen’s plan is that it almost worked.”

Mr. Robert Donahue, sophomore history teacher, stood before his whiteboards like an old master before the gesso on the cappella wall, furiously scribbling a quick map of the Low Countries in blue marker.

“The German advance was like a gate, and it had to swing with precision, following Schlieffen’s command ‘Let the last man on the right brush the channel with his sleeve.’”

Donahue had been at Jesuit for eleven years and was considered by many the toughest teacher in the school. Any word written or spoken could appear in a test question, and Dan approached the class with an on-your-toes boot-camp panic.