My face must have looked like I felt, jumbled and confused. “So what is it? And answer quickly before our boy decides to pee again.”

She shook her head. “I’m just thinking of everything that’s going on right now. Blake. Sam. Even Jennifer. There are a lot of complicated and bruised feelings there. People trying to stand up for what they think is right. People trying hard to protect what’s theirs. I’d protect Henry if he were in danger. My mom would. You would. Sam’s fighting to keep Blake. Makes sense?”

“People fight to hang on to the things that matter to them. Their loved ones. Their pride. Their sense of honor on a soccer field. I get it.”

“And sometimes that gets out of control,” Amanda said.

“Are you talking about soccer? Or what?”

“We should go,” she said. “It’s not important.”

“Amanda?”

“Seriously. Let’s just go.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

It took fifteen minutes to drive to my in-laws’ house.

We rode mostly in silence. Car trips lulled Henry into peaceful oblivion, so he remained quiet, strapped into his car seat. Amanda had tuned the radio to a local rock station, something that played classics from the seventies. I didn’t mind the station, but it tended to rotate through the same songs over and over again, ad nauseam. I could only handle so many versions of “Free Bird” in one day.

Amanda liked it though. The station played “Fool for the City,” and Amanda absently looked out the passenger-side window, her body swaying slightly to the music. But her mind seemed to be on other, more important things. No doubt she was reliving Kyle Dornan’s appearance at our back door, his aggressive push to break inside. It might take a long time for her to feel safe in the house again. I had to accept she might never feel completely at ease.

Robert, one of the partners in the Juniper Pig, had had his house broken into once when he wasn’t home. The thieves came in through a bedroom window and ransacked the place, taking little of substance. But they clearly enjoyed destroying Robert’s possessions and disrupting all of his order. Robert told me he slept with the lights on in his house for two weeks. And it took another month before he slept through the night without freaking out over the usual noises and clicks that any house made.

I reached over and placed my hand on Amanda’s knee. She jumped a little.

I smiled, and she smiled back in a somewhat forced manner. I kept my hand on her knee, squeezing through the soft denim. She placed her hand on mine but looked out the window again.

“All that stuff you were saying before we left the house,” I said, “about fighting and standing up for things. Is there more to that?”

“Shhh.”