“He’s dangerous, Bill. He’s a danger to our son. Don’t you see that? Can’t you feel it?”

French sighed again, and knelt by the tub. Gabrielle had tried to make room in her heart for the man Jason had become, but Jason had not made it easy for her. Heroin. Prison. The effect he had on Gibby. Before Jason’s conviction, all Gibby had wanted was to trail in his brother’s shadow, to know about the Marine Corps and war, and whether he, too, should go to Vietnam. “Listen,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you in person that Jason was back, to promise you that I’ll keep Gibson safe.”

“You think I’m silly, don’t you? A silly, overprotective woman.”

“I promise you I don’t.”

“If you were a mother, you’d understand.”

“Jason would never hurt his brother.”

“Not intentionally. Not with malice.”

She left the rest unspoken, but he understood the deeper fears, her worries about corruption, deception, dangerous ideas.

“Gibby’s not in school,” she said. “Did you know that?”

“It’s a skip day. He’ll be at the quarry with his friends. Ken is already looking for him.”

“What if Jason finds him first?”

French looked away from the fear in his wife’s eyes. Gibby was her world, and Jason was a destroyer of worlds. “I’ll go, too,” he said. “I’ll find him.”

“You do that. You bring him home.”

French stood, but didn’t leave. He pushed his hands into his pockets, and looked down on the crown of her head and the curve of a dim, damp shoulder, bits of his wife on an apron of dark water. “Sooner or later Gibson will want to see his brother.”

“Just make sure it’s later.”

“Jason was inside for two years and change. He did his time.”

“Only Gibby matters. I’m sorry, Bill, but that’s the truth.”

“Won’t you at least talk to him?”

“To Jason?”

“Yes.”

“About what?” she asked. “Heroin?”

2

The quarry means different things to different people. For me, it’s about the drop. They say it’s a hundred and thirty feet from the top of the cliff to the top of the water, and from the water that feels about right: the granite rising, the gray sky above that. All that sameness makes the cliff seem small, and I know what people think, floating on their backs or looking out from the narrow shore across the quarry.

I could do that.

The more they drink, the more certain they become. It’s only water, they say, just a dive. How hard can it be?

But then they make the climb.