I snap. “Dad, what the hell is wrong with you?”

That stops him. He doesn’t look angered. He seems amused.

“Well, fair enough,” he says. He reaches out and ruffles Max’s hair. “I’m just saying your boy is a tough son of a bitch.”

Then he turns and walks back from where he came, jingling his glass, the clinking ice the only sound among us.

My god, we haven’t even made it past the foyer.

Seven

Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin

Back home, Colin found Meg with a book in bed, covers pulled up to her waist.

“Hey,” he said.

She looked up. “How was she?”

“Numb,” he said.

“Did you talk?”

He nodded. “A little. Usual stuff, mostly.”

“Did you tell her we want to hire someone to check in on her?”

“Yup, as always. And as always, she said no.”

Meg let out an exhale, and Colin identified it. Meg’s exhales all had fingerprints on them, and Colin could gauge her state of mind by which exhale she used at any particular time. His guess was confirmed with her next sentence.

“We uprooted our lives, and all we’re doing is watching her slowly kill herself. We could have done that from Madison.”

“Let’s give it a little more time,” he said. “We haven’t been here all that long. We’re adjusting, she’s adjusting. Besides, it’s an easier conversation to have in the daytime with her.”

Meg looped a strand of her shoulder-length hair behind her ear. “I just don’t know what good we’re doing here. And when the baby comes, we’ll have even less time to spend with her.”

“But maybe having the baby will help turn her around,” he said. “Maybe our child is the spark she needs.”

“If she makes it until then.”

“We’re family,” Colin added. “Just being close by, it means a lot to her. We don’t have to solve every problem right now. We just need to be here.”

Colin walked up to the bed, leaned down, and kissed Meg on the cheek. As he did, he reached with his left hand and lightly traced his fingertips along the base of her neck, down over her breasts, and finally up and around her stomach, which was only half-covered by one of his loose-knit tank tops. He thought once again of their child, though this time, Colin didn’t picture a baby but an adult, a person his own age. He pictured a man, Colin’s son, forty years old and grappling with the same issues Colin faced now. Was Colin destined to end up like his mother, old and rattled, a collector of junk, alternatingly lucid and crazed?

And would Colin’s child be there for him?

He hoped the answer to the first question was no. But if history was going to repeat itself, Colin liked to think the answer to the second was yes.

Meg gave him enough of a smile to let him know she didn’t want an argument, either, and then went back to her book.