“Perfect,” I say, even though it tastes off. Nothing smells good right now. The red wine Patrick pours stinks like rancid oil; the meat, which I think is chicken, but could be goat liver for all I know, fills the kitchen and dining room with a hellish stench. I should be starving, but I’m not. “Steven’s not back yet? Oh. Speak of the devil.”

My son walks in, slamming the back door behind him. Sonia brightens, as do the twins. Patrick and I are about to say a “Hello,” but Steven walks past us, past the fridge, and straight down the hall toward his room. His face is flushed, a bloom of mottled red on his cheeks and neck. Somehow, he looks thirty-seven instead of seventeen, the entire world on his shoulders.

And here’s the shittiness of parenthood, wrapped up in one sullen teenager.

“I’ll go,” I say. I need a break from food odors before my olfactory nerves decide to rebel. “Ask Sonia to tell you about her card game.”

Steven’s music shakes my bones as I walk down the hall to his bedroom door. I knock once; there’s no answer. On the second knock, Steven grunts a bored “Enter.”

“You okay, kiddo?” I say, sticking my nose in the doorway.

Whatever he’s listening to fades to dull background noise. “Yeah,” Steven says.

“School go okay?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s Julia?”

“Fine.”

“Coming out for dinner? It’s almost ready.”

“Soon.”

I turn to go, and he breaks the chain of monosyllables. “Mom? If someone you knew—maybe even someone you really love—did a shitty thing, would you rat them out?”

It’s necessary for me to think about this.

Once, I’d have said yes. See someone go sixty in a school zone, take down their license plate. Watch a parent hit his kid in the Walmart, call the cops. Witness a robbery next door, report it. For every action, there’s an opposing and appropriate reaction. Except there isn’t, not anymore. The reactions might be opposing, but they sure as shit aren’t appropriate. I knew about Annie Wilson and her backdoor man in his blue pickup truck, although he didn’t bother using the back door. I know Lin Kwan, who now lives with her brother, is the type of woman who prefers other women. I also know that if I—in Steven’s words—had ratted Annie out, I’d have a hell of a time facing myself each morning. The idea of playing informant on Lin is anathema, whatever Reverend Carl and the rest of the Pure have to say about it.

“Depends,” I say. “Why?”

“No reason,” Steven says, and hoists himself off his bed. “Guess I should take a shower.”