Chapter One

Family



In the heat of the fight, they forgot about the children.

They were yelling at each other about an issue neither could now recall. They could only remember that one or the other of them had been wronged somehow.

Then she’d stopped, said, “Where are the kids?”

“Of course,” he shouted, “it would be you to take the higher ground. It would be you to bring the kids into this, make me feel like a heel for not thinking about them!”

“And of course,” she shouted, “it would be you to think I’d use them as a weapon against you!”

But then they fell silent, and the quiet of the moment—neither could now recall when there had been silence in the house— infused them both with fear, so that they dropped their hands from the authoritative gestures they’d held them in, index finger of one hand pointed at the other’s face, the other hand clenched in a fist at the hip, and let their arms go loose, useless.

They had forgotten about the children.

“Where are they?” he said, but she was already out of the room, headed upstairs.

She could not find them in their rooms, saw only evidence they had been here before: In Scott’s room were plastic models of fighter jets hung by fish line from the ceiling; on the walls were pennants of major league baseball teams and posters of heavy metal bands with names such as The Broken Necks and The Disease. The dresser in Jennifer’s room was strewn with barrettes and combs, the bed left unmade and littered with Barbies and teen magazines, at least a dozen different outfits heaped on