“It’s going to be expensive,” I warn her. “Think Dad’ll spring for it?”

I’m mostly joking, but Mom takes it seriously. “Of course he will. He loves you.”

Ire spikes inside me. “Why —?” I start too loudly and catch myself. “Why do you always defend him, Mom?”

The kitchen grows still. In the first faint hint of dawn, the backyard has turned gray. Mom starts to lift her cup, then sets it down. She reaches for my hand and again studies my bitten fingernails. “Lucas, don’t let”— she pauses, as if choosing her words carefully — “whatever happens between him and me affect your relationship.”

“What relationship?”

She lets go of my hand. The crows’-feet around her eyes deepen. “You know, young man, you haven’t exactly been the easiest son.”

“And he’s been an easy father?”

Her gaze goes down to the table. “It’s been difficult for him.”

I assume she’s talking about Alan. And me. And Dad growing up poor without a father of his own. But it pisses me off. “It hasn’t been easy for you, either, but I don’t see you sneaking around on him.” I press my hands down on the table, push myself up, and head back to my room.

Friday, August 8

At home after work, I call Lou at Wilkinson Motorsports and learn that the registration and insurance have come in. Arno will give me a ride over in a bit, but first we sit in the GTO, a copy of Newsday spread open between us. Like so many times before, we’ve wordlessly agreed to call a truce to the argument we had a few nights ago. (If you’ve ever wondered if it’s possible for two teenage boys to act like an old married couple, I offer Arno and me as evidence.)

In the newspaper’s black-and-white front-page photo, someone with a jacket pulled over his head to hide his face is bent forward, his hands behind his back, no doubt locked there by handcuffs, while a detective escorts him.

The story jumps to an inside page and a picture of cops and firemen standing amid a tangle of hoses in the street in front of a vaguely familiar-looking house.

“He never could throw straight.” Arno lights a half-smoked joint and starts to back out of the driveway.

It isn’t hard to find the house. A police car is parked at the curb. Halfway up the front walk is a blackened spot edged by singed grass and a partially immolated azalea.