Diane walked past him into the kitchen and started the process of making coffee. She always ground her own beans. She did not feel that her coffee tasted better because of this, she simply liked the process of grinding beans: the cool crumple of the bag from the freezer, the gentle rattle of beans across the countertop, the therapeutic release of pounding them into grounds with a hammer for several minutes.

As she removed her safety goggles and washed her hands, she called to the living room, “How’s school?”

“You didn’t come home last night.”

She dried her hands. “I came home late last night.”

“From what?”

“Work.”

“You never work late.”

“I did last night?”

She hated the question in her own voice but had never been good at lying.

“Doing what? What were you doing that you didn’t get home until early morning and that you didn’t answer my texts and that you didn’t reply to my e-mails?”

“My phone was off.”

“Okay. Why?”

She came back into the living room, and Josh stood to face her. He was tall, his jeans draping in baggy folds over his hooves.

Diane wished she knew what Josh looked like. She wished there was a single thing she could assume about her son. She wished Josh had a second parent to be ballast. Josh wished all of those things, too.

“I was on a date.”

Josh didn’t respond, so Diane nervously filled the pause.

“My phone died, and I was. Um.”

“You just said you were at work.”

Josh tried to fold his arms, but the claws snagged on each other, and so he awkwardly clasped them in front of him.

“Yes, I’ve been seeing someone. I know we don’t talk about dating much. Mom and son, you know. It’s . . . awkward. Right?”

“No, Mom, no. That’s really cool. What’s their name?”

A good lie requires two things: (1) assertiveness in delivery, and (2) narrative logic that cannot be unhinged by actual truth.

“Dawn,” Diane said assertively, achieving one of those two things.

“Don?”

“Yes, Dawn.”

Josh sat back down.

“How long have you been seeing Don?”

“A few weeks. Mostly seeing movies and having some dinner, getting to know each other.”

Diane began to panic about Josh running into Dawn and trying to talk to her about their relationship. She mentally scheduled an ugly breakup with Dawn in the coming days. Or would that make Josh even more likely to talk to her? It would certainly remove Dawn from the list of possible future friends.

“And so you spent the night at Don’s house last night?”

Right. She was still dating Dawn in the here and now, and had to focus.

“You’re not allowed to ask me questions like that, Joshua.”

“You’re right. Gross.”