Caleb killed Mr. and Mrs. Fishy, he said in the aftermath. The bastard had to pay.

Sweetie, violence is not the right way to deal with problems. Violence is never—

It was a human reaction, Mom. Let’s ask Isaiah.

This boomeranged on me in a big way. It was I who taught her son to pop a jab and follow it home with a stiff right. It was I who instructed him in the rudiments of slipping a punch and the importance of mercilessly kicking a foe when he’s down. Suffer no fools and give no quarter. I may have mentioned while watching a Clint Eastwood western that righteous vengeance is a virtue. He’d taken the lessons to heart.

I’d asked Meg if she was mad at me. Her brittle, icy smile indicated, yep, very mad. Thankfully, the temperature had warmed. Although matters remained unsettled.

Stone Ridge held an art fair for local vendors and visiting artists. The gallery downstairs from my office featured an exhibition on the Holocaust. Meg and Devlin and I took it in toward the end of our afternoon tour. Black-and-white photography presented by the grandchildren of a war correspondent. One photo captured the pain and anguish of humanity’s dark hour: a bin overflowing with wedding bands confiscated from murdered Jews. A soldier ran his hands through the rings as if plunging them into grain. Death renders the familiar alien. Death makes a mockery of life.

Devlin had questions. He didn’t fully comprehend the gravity of the exhibition. Sharp, intuitive child, nonetheless. He picked up context clues. Meg did the heavy lifting, explaining how one group of people came to power and used that power for terrible evil. She asked him to recall the mean kids in school, and fish-murderer Caleb shot to the top of the example list, and she briefly, deftly, described the concept of hatred for the mere sake of hatred, hatred based on differences perceived and otherwise, and how that led to the rise of the Nazis and the horrors they perpetrated. I contributed timely nods and grunts. He didn’t say much; there’s never closure in these situations.

Dinner in North Kingston; an industrial neighborhood within a stone’s throw of the off-ramp. The restaurant was called the Old Aurora Lounge. Came highly recommended by senior gangsters. I could see why. The ambiance whisked the grayer wiseguys back to the era of Jimmy Hoffa and a perpetually befuddled FBI. Brown furniture, greenish carpet, orange walls, and amber drinking glasses. I was told that before smoking in restaurants went by the wayside, the lounge featured ashtrays heavy enough to concuss a moose. Our server’s tag said MARGE. She was old and veiny and could’ve been hunched over a slot machine in Atlantic City. I’ve never tasted that much chlorine in a cup of coffee.

We enjoyed our meal, relatively speaking. As I went to pay the bill, a man wearing a Caesar haircut and a polo shirt beat me to the counter. He hit on the girl working the register. She blushed, looking everywhere but directly at him.