Ben remembered the friendly disdain he had felt for Ahmed’s family getting their start in cigarettes. While Ahmed was telling him about it, he had felt swaddled in the rightness of his family: sailmaking and vulcanized rubber and public leadership. But now, provided the plan worked at all, his father would be remaking himself with strip malls.

Ben wanted to ask how long it would be until there was money coming in, but his dad was still talking.

“They’ve been really receptive out there. We’ll be able to resell the land to a commercial developer. Okay? By New Year’s we’ll be set.”

The next morning his dad picked Teddy up at the airport. As soon as Teddy came into the kitchen, Ben saw again how much he resembled their parents, fair like them; Ben’s darker aspect apparently came from Helen’s father. Teddy tested him with his familiar mischievous eyes, but his hug was sincere, as though he needed the contact. Ben could feel the slight padding he had gained.

”They beating the shit out of you up there?” He drew his leg back as though to kick Ben in the bad shin and laughed.

Ben looked at Teddy over the dinner table that night and thought about him walking to the squash courts filled with dread. He wanted to see Teddy’s face if he said Price’s name out loud. But he stayed quiet. Teddy mentioned Preston and Sammy from SJS and Will and Sean from home, and Ben wondered how he was keeping in touch with all of them.

On Tuesday, Ben thought about calling Tim or some of the other Um Club kids to hit, but after playing Colin he didn’t feel like getting on court in the boot. So he studied for his exams and reread “Decision-Making,” hoping to come up with some suggestions for improvement for Markson. They should change all the “boys” to “students.” But that would be the first thing Markson would do. As he read back over his notes from bio, Ben found himself wondering where in their house the rolled-up architectural plans for the squash courts might be.

His mom came home from a meeting with her advisor. After she had taken a bath and was sitting in her robe with a glass of wine, reading People as a break from her dissertation, Ben asked her about what his dad had said in the car. She put the glass on the coffee table with the small fold-up wings.

“We’ve got to trust him, Ben.”

Ben wanted to ask, “Do you trust him?” but he thought he wouldn’t be able to tolerate her looking away.

“Okay. All right. You’re right.”

The next day she started to prepare the Thanksgiving meal. All of the thousands of kitchen tasks made Helen think of her mother, patiently teaching her how to stretch leftovers, how to salvage a spoiled apple and let down hems.