After an hour of that hell, he left the gymnasium and took a seat on the stone wall, where he and Eleanora were to meet his mother after the dance. He had a cell phone and could have called his mother, but he didn’t. Instead, he spent the next three hours waiting, and thinking, and plotting how he would make Eleanora regret the way she had treated him.

“Where’s Eleanora?” his mother had asked when she pulled up.

He had practiced his answer as he waited. Amy hated his speech impediment, so when he had the opportunity to formulate his sentences in advance, he avoided words with the letter S in them. No reason to add to the revulsion she already felt for her son.

“Eleanora will ride home with a friend.”

“What do you mean? She’s your date. She came with you, so she should leave with you.”

Gavin got in the car. Angry and embarrassed, his next words came out sharper than he had intended. “Go, would you!”

“Don’t you talk to me that way, young man! What’s going on? Did she dump you?”

“I told you—”

“If that little bitch—”

At that exact moment, Eleanora walked out of the gymnasium with her friends, and Gavin’s mother grabbed her Styrofoam cup of coffee and jumped out of the car. Gavin opened his mouth to stop her, but the door slammed closed before he could get a word out. He watched Amy march across the parking lot toward Eleanora and the others, tossing the coffee lid to the ground as she neared them.

Gavin couldn’t hear what was said, and the exchange lasted only a few seconds before his mother threw the coffee into Eleanora’s face, causing the girl to fall backward to the ground. The others stood in stunned silence as Gavin’s mother walked casually back to her Jaguar. Gavin cursed his mother under his breath. He had been hatching his own plan in those hours as he waited for his mother to show up, but now, any misfortune that might befall Eleanora would be traced back to him. Why hadn’t his mother stayed out of it? The woman had no more cunning than a clod of dirt.

The cops arrived a few minutes after Gavin and his mother got home. It was the second time his mother had been questioned by the police, the first time being the morning they’d found Richard’s body floating in the pool.

Stupidly, Amy chose to act confused. “What assault? What are you talking about?” She was about to talk herself into a criminal charge, so Gavin stepped in, laying it on thick, using words that exposed his speech impediment. He even threw in a bit of a stutter for good measure.

“Sh-sh-sche grabbed Mom’s arm. That’s how sche sh-sh-shcpilled the coffee. She was yelling and sh-sh-shcwearing at Mom, sh-sh-shctepping in like she was gonna hit her. Mom defended hershcelf. I schaw the whole thing.”

How could they not believe the pathetic pleading of a kid so messed up that he could barely get the words out? Besides, the coffee wasn’t hot enough to burn, so maybe Eleanora had exaggerated her story. The police closed the books on Eleanora’s assault and left Gavin’s house with a polite nod. And for the second time in his life, Gavin got away with lying to the police.