It was still raining pretty heavily outside, and he wanted to go to bed and get into some makeup sex, but Margot said she wasn’t tired and wanted to stay awake a little longer. There was nothing on HBO or any of the other channels, so he ran through their videotape titles. None of the movies sounded good, and they finally settled on watching some episodes of Fawlty Towers, Margot’s favorite TV show of all time.

She went off to go to the bathroom while he fast-forwarded to an episode they hadn’t seen in a while, the one with Manuel’s rat. On an impulse, he walked back to Tony’s room. The door was closed, and he pressed his ear to it but could hear nothing. Margot was still in the bathroom, and he paused a moment, then pushed open his son’s door.

A half-finished doll lay on the center of Tony’s bed.

This one, if possible, was even worse than the one before. Like its predecessor, it was made up of junk-food cups and plastic straws, toilet-paper tubes and toothpicks. But the newspaper photographs that had been cut out and taped together to form its composite face were angry and wild: widely staring eyes, flared nostrils, screaming mouth. The effect was one of discordance and derangement, and Daniel looked from the doll to his surprised son, who belatedly moved his body in front of the figure to hide it.

Daniel stared at the boy, felt the anger rise within him. “I warned you, didn’t I?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it!” Tony replied defensively. “It’s just my project!”

Daniel crossed the room in two steps, moved the boy aside with one arm, grabbed the doll with the other.

Did Margot know about this?

If she did, he’d get into it with her. Sticking up for her son in an argument was one thing, but deliberately going behind his back and helping Tony to deceive him was another.

The doll felt strange in his hand. Heavier than it should. More solid. He squeezed it hard, tried to crumple it, but only succeeded in creating two slight indentations in the cup body.

He shook the doll at his son. “I told you you couldn’t do this, didn’t I?”

Tony cowered before him. “You don’t have to go crazy.”

He was a little more out of control than he should be, more adamant than he wanted, and he tried to calm down. “I specifically told you—”

“Mom!”

Daniel turned to see Margot standing in the doorway.

She hadn’t known about the doll. There was a split-second expression of surprise upon her face, then what looked like fear crossed her features as her gaze passed over the figure. Her eyes met Daniel’s, and the two of them exchanged a wordless understanding.