He was trying to hold back the panic in his chest. “We found Mrs. Barnacle today. She was dead.”

“What? Why didn’t you say something?” She came over and sat next to him at the table.

“We found her because Annie wanted to give her some money and we wanted to see her new puppy. And she’d died. And we all ran to get help. And I went too. And then Annie said I’d gone back and touched Mrs. Barnacle.”

His mom’s eyes went blank. She looked all at once like a stranger in those old photographs where the people never smiled. He had taken a few of these for his collection until he realized that after a while the photographs, unlike the objects, emptied out somehow and came to mean even less than nothing.

At last she murmured, “What a terrible thing to say about you.”

He wished she would look at him directly.

She put her hands flat on the table, as if she were going to get up, but then seemed to change her mind. “Try to get through this.”

“Through what?”

“Just a few more years. Then we’ll go.”

“What do you mean, we’ll go?”

“I mean you’ll be able to go. Go to college or get a job. Go anywhere. Start again. Just a few more years.”

He felt a terrible deep pain. He realized not only that his mom didn’t believe he hadn’t touched Mrs. Barnacle but that she had never believed anything. What had she said? That he could forget her, his dad, his home, his friends. But his dad and his friends had never looked at him like his mom looked at him now, as if there were nothing to salvage from him or his life, that he should throw it all away and start again. Her too. Throw her away. It made him so angry; glancing at her cold sore, he was almost overwhelmed by a deep revulsion for her.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll go someplace.”

Now, with that empty two-dimensional face, she went to kiss his forehead. He pulled away.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She reached to her mouth.

He got up from the table and headed to his room.

“I shouldn’t have shared that glass,” she called after him. “I could see Mrs. Hanratty had something on her lip. I just didn’t want to be rude.”

Angela was comforting Joanne, the receptionist, whose boyfriend had left her the night before, when Dr. Weaver appeared.

“Nurse Gordiano,” he admonished sternly, “is it usual for the staff to use this area as a lounge?”

“Sir,” Joanne interjected, trying to explain as she wiped her tears. “Angela was just—”

“Well, I’m sure she was, but I can’t have the reception area cluttered with extraneous people.”

“Dr. Weaver’s right, Joanne”—Angela put on her coat—“as he invariably is.” Tying up her lush and chaotic black curls, she noticed him glancing at her neck.

“Angela,” he called, as she was about to exit.

She turned back. “It’s Nurse Weaver”—she faltered, flushing—“Nurse Gordiano, I mean, Dr. Weaver, and I was under the impression you wanted me to leave.”