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Chapter One
"Made it, Ma. Top o' the world," Leo quoted theatrically, his words
shrouding his head in the cold night air. "What would you think if I
went out like that?"
His mother twisted around in her wheelchair to look at him
balefully. "I don't understand why such a wonderful dancer would do
a movie like that."
Leo smiled down at her as he pushed her gently along a shoveled
path, across the broad courtyard before Dartmouth's Hopkins Center
for the Arts, universally nicknamed The Hop. "I warned you, Ma. I
told you it wasn't Yankee Doodle Dandy."
"You said it was a gangster movie," she persisted, "not an ode to a
psychopath."
Leo burst out laughing. "Wow. You make it sound pretty deep. I just
liked it when he shot the car trunk full of holes to let the guy
inside breathe, or when he went nutso in the prison dining hall
after finding out his mother died."
She faced forward again as they neared the curb. "How did I end up
with such a disturbed child?" she asked meditatively.
"Hey," he told her. "You got one son who's a cop. Stands to reason
the other should go to the d ... read full excerpt from Chat ebook
