“Wait, was today the day you saw Jill? Is this some way you’re trying to...I don’t know...make it up to me because we had a little spat? You didn’t have to do that. You had a right to do whatever you want, Theaitsa.”

“I didn’t!” I told him. “I mean, I didn’t do it to make up to you. I just needed to busy my hands and stifle my head.”

Stefan walked into the kitchen, and I told him about Jill, and told both of them what she wanted. Jep only shrugged, and we sat down to eat. Stefan was distracted during dinner, only vaguely noticing a main dish he usually complimented extravagantly, and he was quick to clear off the table and slip away. Not long after, I saw him head out to his truck. Jep wanted to watch an old Alfred Hitchcock movie. I went to my desk and sank down into The Haunted Lady, then realized after a while that I was boring even myself. Nine o’clock. Then ten. Just after ten, Stefan came back, driving very slowly, dousing the lights at the verge of the driveway, parking conspicuously slantwise across it. Curious, I met him at the door, and he reeked like a brewery.

“You’re drunk,” I said, more curiously than accusingly.

“So what,” he said, nearly comically trying to stare me down first with one eye, then the other.

“You can’t drive drunk. Are you nuts?” Jep said, pounding down the stairs. As someone who had spent his professional life trying to channel the passions of young men, he was not only a single-beer kind of drinker, but a fanatic about sobriety behind the wheel. Ten years earlier, he’d lost a star player in one of those hideous black-road country crashes that killed all four people. The car rocketed so far off the road that police didn’t even find it for three days.

“I didn’t, Dad. At least not all the way. Will drove us to his place, so just from there. I’m sorry,” Stefan said. “But the fact is I feel like shit anyhow. Booze is its own punishment.” He followed Jep upstairs and I heard the tinny sound of cheering on TV. But then Stefan came back and sat slumped on the landing. I made him a cup of tea, which he drank like a man on Everest. I made him another, more sugar, please, Mom?