‘I can’t. It’s too easy,’ Dad said.

Sighing, she straightened his perfectly straight tie. ‘I was actually thinking that we should visit your dad this Christmas. He’s always alone, Ray …’

My dad’s relationship with his father was the definition of complicated. ‘He chooses to be alone. He likes it.’

‘But, honey, he’s so happy when we visit. He adores Landon, and he won’t be around forever.’

My mom’s parents had been in their early forties when she came along – a surprise baby long after they’d accepted the idea of being childless. Prominent professors in analytical fields, they’d spoiled their curiously artistic daughter rotten – her words. They were both gone by the time I was five or six. Mom missed them a lot, but I barely remembered my grandmother, and couldn’t remember my grandfather at all.

Grandpa – Dad’s dad – was the only grandparent I had left.

‘He just thinks he’s finally got a sucker to take over the Maxfield family business,’ he air-quoted, ‘because Landon likes to go out on the boat with him. Plus, we just saw him a couple of months ago, in July.’ In spite of these claims, I heard the surrender in his voice, caving to whatever Mom wanted. He pretty much always did. ‘When I escaped that town, I never intended to go back at all. And here you are making me go every summer. And now Christmas?’

‘Because it’s the right thing to do. And because you aren’t a sulky eighteen-year-old boy any more – you’re a grown man.’

He kissed her again, wrapping his arms round her and growling, ‘Damned right I am.’

‘Minor in the room. Right here. On the sofa. Having his innocence corrupted. By his own parents.’

‘Go get ready for school, baby boy,’ Mom said, calling me the thing she only said in front of Dad or when we were alone. Thirteen-year-olds couldn’t have their moms saying crap like that in front of friends or the general public.

I shut down the game and my parents were still kissing.

‘Gladly.’ I made blinders with my hands as I passed them.

‘Hug your father goodbye first.’

I did a one-eighty at the base of the staircase and leaned into him for a quick hug. He patted my shoulder and looked down at me, still inches taller, though I was gaining on him.

I’d picked Mom up the other day just to prove I could and she squealed and laughed. ‘I used to change your diaper!’

I grimaced. ‘Mom, really – that’s the memory of my infancy you want to evoke?’

She poked me in the chest and slanted a brow. ‘Unless you want me to bring up how I fed you?’

I put her down. ‘Eww, no. Ugh.’

‘Do well at school and practise hard for that game this Sunday against those asshats from Annandale,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll be back Thursday.’ He ruffled my hair, which he knew I sorta hated – and that’s why he did it.

I twisted out from under his hand. ‘Good use of asshat, old man. Your vocab is improving.’

He smirked. ‘All right, big guy.’ He took my shoulders and looked me in the eye. ‘You’re the man of the house while I’m gone. Take care of your mother.’

‘Okay, Dad. Will do.’ I saluted and ran up the stairs, thinking about the game this weekend, and Yesenia, who I planned to ask out before the end of the day, if I could man up enough to do it.

LUCAS

The temperature at the beach was in the seventies, the average for this time of year. The Hellers dropped me off at Dad’s before heading to their vacation rental with a thawing turkey and a box full of yams, green beans, bread crumbs and cranberries. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow,’ Cindy told us. ‘We’ll eat around one o’clock. And if the turkey isn’t done yet, we’ll be drinking by one o’clock.’

Boyce: You here?

Me: Yeah. Give me a couple hours.

I dropped my duffle bag on the bed. The room had never seemed smaller. It was like a cocoon. I’d emerged from it and flown away over three years ago, and now it was just a tight, outgrown place, both familiar and odd.

The blank wall was full of thumbtack holes, and the shelves opposite were mostly empty. Dad hadn’t moved the light fixture back to the kitchen – it still hung near the ceiling, casting its indirect illumination over the space. A few old textbooks were stacked on one shelf, along with Grandpa’s Bible and a high-school directory. There was also an envelope that hadn’t been there when I visited last. It contained a dozen or so snapshots I’d never seen before.

One had been taken on my first day of eighth grade, after I got out of the car in my new uniform. I’d outgrown every item of clothing that fitted me three months before. I smirked at the camera – at my mom – as a guy on the sidewalk behind me photobombed, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth. Tyrell. Hated or loved by every teacher, he was one of the funniest guys I’d ever known. In the background, nearer the school building, a trio of girls stood talking. One of them faced the camera, dark hair in a ponytail, dark eyes on the back of my head. Yesenia. She was probably about to enter law school now, or begin an internship in accounting or apply for master’s degree programmes in film or sociology. I hadn’t known her well enough to know her interests or ambitions, beyond her interest in me. At thirteen, that was all that mattered.

I sifted through the other photos, pausing at one of Mom painting, and another of the two of us clowning in the backyard. I pressed the ache in the centre of my chest and put them all away to study later, musing that Dad must have left them in here for me. Maybe these images had been on a memory card in an old camera he’d finally checked before throwing it away.