“I’m as good a mother as you are a father, and I spend more time with them than you do. Just because I left them for fifteen minutes—”

“I thought you said it was twenty.”

She glared at him. “Did you know that Natalie Bloom, that perfect mother, left Hannah in the car one time when she went in to the bank when Hannah was a baby? Because she forgot? In the summer? And do you know that Dottie’s daughter Livia answered the phone the other day when I called because Dottie had fallen asleep in front of her computer, and Livia was in the kitchen next to the phone because she was trying to make macaroni and cheese even though she’s too young to use the stove? Plus, I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that I don’t see that little boy down the block, what’s-his-name, wandering out into the street with his parents nowhere in sight. So before you start accusing me of being a bad parent, I suggest you look around and do a little comparison shopping.”

Neither of them were going to budge on their positions, but the girls were already frightened by the fighting, and Patty had promised not to do it again, so even though he was still angry, Brad forced himself to calm down and nod. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay what?”

“You made a mistake, you learned from it, and you’re not going to do it again.”

“Oh, I learned from it?”

He shot her a look, and she stopped herself, glancing toward the hallway and the girls’ bedroom beyond. “Fine,” she said.

He took her hand. “I’m only making a big deal of it because there are fifteen people dead—fifteen!—and that bank manager…” He shook his head. “You didn’t see what happened to him.”

“I know. And I’ll be careful.”

“Okay.”

They hugged and made up, and both of them went back to get the girls and tell them everything was okay.

2

Nick met up with Aaron at lunch, the two of them sitting on the low brick wall in front of the band room. Once again, Victor was MIA.

“Where is he?” Aaron wondered, unwrapping his sandwich. “He’s been out for three days now.”

“Maybe he has mono.”

Aaron snorted. “Victor? Right. Who’d he be kissing?”

“Well…Stacey could have spit on him.”