The kitchen is filled with the scent of warming food in the oven. Two torn Swanson fried chicken TV dinner boxes lie on the counter, while Mom sits at the kitchen table in a housedress, reading a gardening book. Gardening is her chief hobby. Spring, summer, and fall, our house is surrounded by colorful, carefully curated flower beds. (Does she surround our house with beautiful gardens to mask the ugliness inside?) She looks up at me with a wan expression. No makeup, and her hair is flat and unbrushed.

“When were you going to tell me about Goddard?” she asks.

She must have seen the rejection letter on my desk. I’m surprised it took so long; it’s been sitting there for nearly a week. I tell her not to worry because Charles the draft counselor is helping me apply for conscientious objector status.

Her eyebrows dip. “Didn’t Milton’s brother, Rudy, try to be a conscientious objector?”

I know what she’s thinking: If super-smart piano prodigy Rudy tried the CO route and got turned down, what chance does nonprodigy Goddard College reject Lucas have?

“If conscientious objector doesn’t work, Charles says we have time to explore other options.”

“Such as?”

Prison, Canada . . . Nothing I want to lay on her until we see where the CO thing goes. “Mom, I’ll figure it out. I promise.”

When she squeezes her eyes closed, then lowers her face into her hands, I’m caught off guard. “What is it, Mom?”

A long moment passes. She lifts her head and has the look of someone who might have had tears in her eyes if they had any tears left. She shakes her head as if snapping herself out of something. “Nothing. It was just a thought.”

“About?”

She focuses, looks directly at me. “That I can’t lose you, too.”

For an instant I assume she’s referring to Dad. Then it hits me. Shit. Shit! From deep in the cave of forgetfulness comes a glimpse of what she must have been thinking. When I was around two and a half, a little brother named Brett was born. I wish I could remember him, but I can’t. He died of pneumonia after six weeks. What I do remember, or think I remember, is the long period of gray stillness that followed at home. Alan was born a year and a half later.

And now Mom’s facing the possibility of losing another son. The merest hint of which must be unbearable to her.

Way to go, numbnuts.

The tinny canned laughter coming from the TV in the den feels like it’s aimed at me. I step closer. “Mom, I’m not going to Vietnam. I promise.”