at all. But it’s the first thing that leaps into your head…” I rub my forehead wearily. “Why are we fighting about this, Nick?”
Nick slumps back against the sofa, the TV remote control sliding out of his hand and onto the floor with a thud. “I don’t know.”
We are both silent, absorbing the fact of that money, of the disconcerting ripple on the still surface of our lives that hints at something darker and deeper. Am I wrong to be suspicious? Does it say something about me? Maybe drugs wouldn’t even cross most mothers’ minds.
“Do you honestly think he’s doing drugs?” Nick asks at last, his voice low and drained. He is staring blankly ahead, looking somehow smaller.
“Doing or dealing?” I shrug. “Most people doing drugs don’t have the money, do they? They’re the ones spending it.” Although I’m no expert; I’m garnering my information from half-remembered episodes of The Wire. This is so outside my realm of experience… and yet now perhaps it isn’t.
“Dealing drugs? Josh?” Nick lets out a huff of hopeless laughter. “How can you even think that?”
“I don’t know.” I shiver suddenly, even though the room is warm. “I don’t think I ever would have before.”
“Before what?”
I shake my head. I’m not even sure how to explain it, how sometimes, since Dylan came into our lives, everything feels so fragile. It only takes a moment for something—everything—to shatter, like it did for Beth. Like it could for us. Or am I just being paranoid?
“Ally, what?” Nick leans forward. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“No, I don’t think so.” I know I don’t. “I just have this… feeling.”
“A feeling.”
“I’m just scared, Nick.”
His expression softens then, and he leans forward and puts his hand on my knee. I cover his hand with my own, grateful for the touch bringing us together, anchoring me to our marriage, our real lives.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, but I’m not sure what he’s apologizing for.
“He’s been kind of secretive lately, don’t you think? I know he’s sixteen and all that, but even a year ago he talked to us more. Didn’t he?”
Nick’s hand tenses on my knee. “I don’t know…”
“Last winter, we went ice skating in Avon, remember? He and Emma were joking around the whole time. He was laughing.” I can’t actually remember the last time I heard Josh laugh.
“Maybe it’s hard for him without Emma here. Harder than we realize.”
“Maybe, but he didn’t really talk to Emma last weekend. And he hardly ever talks to us now. Just grunts and goes up to his room.”
“Ally, that’s a whole other issue than some hidden money.”
“Is it?”
He sighs and sits back, taking his hand off my knee to run it through his hair. “I don’t know.”
We lapse into another unhappy silence. Part of me wishes I never found the money. Ignorance is bliss and all that, and yet now that I’ve found it, I know I wasn’t as ignorant as I wish I’d been. I know that I thought of drugs right away not because I’m so distrusting, but because I’ve sensed all along that something has been off. I just haven’t wanted to acknowledge it.
“Well, we’ll just have to talk to him,” Nick says decisively. “And see what he says.”
“And you think he’ll tell us the truth?”
“I think we’ll know if he’s lying.”
I quake inside at the thought of that conversation. “I never thought we’d be in this position.”
“It might be nothing,” Nick insists stoutly. “And anyway, most parents have some issue or other with their teenagers. We’ve been lucky so far.”
Yes, I think with an inward shudder. So far.
19
BETH
Three days after my dinner with Ally and her family—three long, lonely days—I am sitting on a plaid-patterned sofa in a comfortable room, winter sunlight streaming through the window, about to have my first counseling session.
Anna, my counselor, is a mild-looking woman in her late thirties, with her dark hair swept back in a loose ponytail. She is tall and slim and elegant without being intimidating; her movements seem almost balletic as she puts a box of tissues on the coffee table between us.
“Am I going to need those?” I ask, meaning to sound wry, but it comes out aggressive instead. Four days on, I am still feeling raw from that awful dinner—although the reality is, there was nothing awful about it, and that is what hurts.
Ally’s home, Ally’s family, seem pretty picture-perfect to me. Why wouldn’t Dylan be happy there? And he obviously is. When I said goodbye, he barely put