Chương 2
Mason had not lost it.
He had dropped it near the porch steps, found it ten minutes later, and discovered that the clasp had bent.
He could have told Arthur.
He almost did.
Then Arthur came outside and saw Mason crouching in the snow.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Where’s your watch?”
Mason closed his fist around it.
“Inside.”
Arthur looked at him for a long moment.
“You need to stop being careless with your things.”
“I know.”
“I am serious.”
“I said I know.”
“Watch your tone.”
By dinner, Mason had decided he would rather be accused of losing the watch than admit he had damaged it after Arthur’s warning. Then an uglier idea had come.
He had been angry with Noah all week.
It was difficult to explain because there was no single reason worthy of what followed.
Noah had beaten him at a card game on Monday and refused to let Mason change the rules.
On Tuesday, Noah told Margaret that Mason had called a boy at school “brain-dead,” and Margaret had made Mason apologize over the phone.
On Wednesday, Arthur praised Noah for helping salt the front steps without being asked.
Mason heard the praise from the garage.
“Good kid,” Arthur had said.
Arthur rarely said anything that simple about Mason.
The jealousy embarrassed him.
It also stayed.
So when he realized he could place the damaged watch in Noah’s bag, the idea did not feel monstrous.
It felt, to a twelve-year-old in a frightened and petty moment, like a way to move Arthur’s attention somewhere else.
Mason expected a lecture.
Maybe Noah would lose screen time.
Maybe Arthur would tell Claire.
Mason did not expect the front door.
When Arthur ordered Noah to put on his coat, Mason stopped breathing for a second.
“Where’s he going?”
Arthur did not answer.
Margaret came in from the kitchen.
“Arthur.”
“He wants to behave like someone we can’t trust, he can learn what that costs.”
Noah had stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
“Coat.”
“Arthur, it’s getting worse outside.”
“I am aware of the weather.”
Mason’s stomach tightened.
He could still have spoken.
He would think about that sentence for years.
He could still have spoken.
Instead, he stayed by the stairs.
Noah pulled on his puffer because Arthur told him to.
He put on his boots.
Arthur handed him the backpack.
Noah’s emergency contact information was written on a laminated card stitched into an inside pocket because Claire Whitaker had the kind of mind that imagined ambulances, field trips, food allergies, missing children, inaccessible phones, and all the other problems that other parents preferred not to picture.
NOAH WHITAKER.
Under that:
MOTHER: DR. CLAIRE WHITAKER.
Then her cell number.
Claire had written it herself after Noah lost the first card.
Arthur did not look at it.
He did not look at anything except the boy he believed had lied to his face.
Now, outside, Noah hit the glass again.
“Grandma!”
Margaret’s hand was still over her mouth.
Arthur walked toward the family room.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
He stopped.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t leave him out there.”
“He needs one minute to understand that choices have consequences.”
“That’s not a consequence. Arthur, look outside.”
“He is standing on the porch.”
“He’s nine.”
“I know how old he is.”
Another knock.
Softer.
Margaret started toward the door.
Arthur stepped between her and it.
“Give him a minute.”
Her face changed.
It was a tiny change, but after forty-three years of marriage Arthur recognized it.
Not fear exactly.
Something older.
Something he had seen when their son Daniel was sixteen and Arthur took the car keys for a month after Daniel lied about a party.
Something he had seen when Claire was twenty-two and told them she had accepted a medical-school offer in Chicago rather than Colorado.
Margaret looked at him as though she had reached the edge of a sentence she had been postponing for decades.
Then Noah knocked again.
“Grandma... please.”
Arthur heard it.
So did Margaret.
Mason stood unseen halfway up the staircase.
He gripped the banister.
Snow swept across the porch and collected against the toes of Noah’s boots.
Behind the glass, the family room lamps made the house look almost golden.
Noah pressed his forehead against the cold pane.
Margaret moved.
Arthur caught her wrist.
Not hard.
But enough.
“Wait.”
She looked down at his hand.
Arthur released her immediately.
The moment embarrassed him.
He covered the embarrassment with anger.
“He will remember this the next time he considers stealing from family.”
Mason sat on the stairs.
His face went hot.
Noah turned away from the door.
He was not trying to leave.
Not yet.
He was trying to get out of the wind.
The porch wrapped around the west side of the house, but the snow was coming from that direction too. He crouched behind one of the wooden posts, tucked his fingers under his arms, and waited.
He expected the door to open.
Any second.
Arthur had said one minute before.
Maybe it had already been one minute.
Noah was bad at judging time when he was scared.
He counted slowly to sixty.
At forty-three he lost track and started again.
Inside, Margaret stood at the kitchen window.
Arthur remained near the hall.
Neither spoke.
Mason went upstairs.
That was the second choice that would become difficult to live with.
He went to the guest room, closed the door, sat on the bed, and stared at his hands.
He thought of going back down.
He thought of saying the watch had fallen into Noah’s bag by mistake.
Not the whole truth.
Enough truth.
But Arthur would ask questions.
Arthur always asked the next question.
Why were you near the bag?
Why was the watch off your wrist?
Why was the clasp damaged?
Why did you lie?
Mason could hear each question in Arthur’s voice.
He remained on the bed.
Outside, Noah stopped counting.
His fingers hurt.
May you like
Not badly.
A sharp prickling sensation ran through them whenever he flexed them.
