“How long have I been married to your mother?”

“Uh, I—I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sixteen.”

“We’ve been married twenty years,” he said, reaching into mom’s collapsed china-display case and pulling out a white plate with a blue design that I knew well. It had never been used for a dinner, no matter how special. Miraculously, it had survived the fire and the fight to put it out. Mom would be thrilled about that at least. “She’s had this plate since she inherited it from her grandmother. She took it on Antiques Roadshow, and it was appraised at two thousand dollars.”

Dad handled the plate carefully with hands that I noticed were shaking slightly, then let it seesaw off his fingers and fall to the floor. I gasped as it shattered into a dozen pieces.

“What is wrong with you, Dad?”

For a second I saw a fleeting expression of pain on his face. “When I tell you to stay away, Jordan, I couldn’t be more serious,” he said, locking eyes with me. “Our lives have changed irrevocably, and there’s no going back to what we knew. We are not in a position to question anything unless we wish to forfeit our lives. Consider this a warning. You must obey.”

I had no response to that. Either he had gone totally nuts, was deep under the influence of some crazy force, or was terrified to his core. The tremor I spotted in my father’s hand made me suspect the last option, though maybe the answer was “all of the above.”

What was he so scared of that he wouldn’t lift a finger to protect his own son? Who had been altered more by those guys, me or him?

CHAPTER 32

Maggie

I HAD THIS fantasy of Jordan’s dad bringing him back to our house and coming in for a beer and a friendly chat as the four of us figured out how my friend could be reunited with his father but still spend significant time with me. But as time passed, this scenario felt increasingly far-fetched, and about two hours after I dropped him off, I swung by Jordan’s house for a look-see. When I pulled up, he was sitting alone on his front stoop with his head bowed between his legs. This was not a portrait of a happy guy.

When I sat down next to him, he looked up with eyes that appeared puffy and streaked.

“I feel like I’ve lost both parents,” he said in a hushed voice.

I took his hands between my own—they were warm and damp.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

I brushed a tiny tear from the corner of his eye with my thumb. He smiled sadly. I put a palm on each of his flushed cheeks. This boy needed a kiss already. I moved my face closer to his, and all of a sudden his eyes got really wide, and he choked as if something was stuck in the back of his throat, and he pitched his body off to the side and let loose a formidable stream of vomit into the charred dirt. As he crouched there heaving, I turned away from the rising sour smell, then turned back. I guess this was what I’d signed up for.