a thirteen-year-old boy building his first website. They made them different nowadays, and she suspected he was tired of building toys—at least the ones they made for boys. She tried to understand what she was reading. It was a blog. She could see several blog titles in the box that said DRAFTS, all of them yet to be published.
“You’ve been busy,” she heard herself say out loud. Snooping was wrong, but what was the harm in taking a little peek—it wasn’t like she was some stranger off the street. Once upon a time, she’d been a bona fide psychologist, for God’s sake. She felt a wave of excitement that didn’t have anything to do with being a psychologist. It was a familiar feeling; she’d spent thirty years digging and plowing through people’s brains—learning their secrets and hearing the ugliest desires of their hearts. She may be retired, but her lust for knowledge had never gone away.
The first draft Juno clicked on was titled: Pretty Sure I’m Adopted.
Sam had said this to her in the park, too, and she’d responded lightly. In a clinical setting, Juno would brush this off, too; adolescents went through a period where they felt disconnected from everything, even the people who loved them most. Juno compared it to a young lion learning to roar, picking fights, feeling insecure but acting volatile.
But this particular blog entry had never made it past one sentence. Sam, new to adult words, had described his feelings in one staggering fritz of emotion: Wolves know when they’re being raised by bears.
She stared at the words. Rolled them around in her head, where they gelled together with his cryptic phrases at the park, the words in Winnie’s journal. “Day after day, it eats me.”
7
WINNIE
The dinner was tradition. Last year it was at Don and Malay’s, the year before that it was at the Parklands’, and this year it was the Crouches’ turn. Vicky Parkland called to confirm on Monday evening just as Winnie was getting home from work.
“Friendsgiving. You didn’t forget, did you? You did.”
“I didn’t,” Winnie said confidently. “This is me we’re talking about.”
She had forgotten.
“Yeah, you do live for a party,” Vicky agreed. “I just hadn’t heard anything and—”
Winnie rolled her eyes. Vicky was calling because she heard about Dakota. Today, Winnie was the tea.
“Things have just been...there’s been drama...”
She could hear Vicky walking into her bedroom and closing the door. Mack must be home, she thought. Vicky never gossiped in front of Mack, who thought it was crass. Winnie walked into her own bedroom; Nigel wasn’t home yet. She loved the way the room smelled: a mixture of wood polish, orange blossom, and her and Nigel. But today, as she stepped inside, she smelled something else—something she wasn’t used to smelling in their space. She hesitated on the threshold, looking around uncertainly. She’d made their bed this morning, arranging the throw pillows the way she liked them; now one of them was lying on the floor next to the nightstand. She walked over and picked it up. Could it have just fallen off?
And then she smelled that smell again. Yes, she definitely smelled something...musky. That was it, the distinct smell of sour body. Had Dakota come up here for something before he left? She clutched the pillow to her chest, sniffing the air like a beagle on the hunt. Winnie would ask him later; in the meantime, she opened one of her drawers, pulling out a dainty glass bottle, and squirted it four times into the air. The sweaty smell was gone, replaced by orange blossom. The cheap stuff never lingered in the air like the good stuff did. Call her a snob, everyone else did. The same went for this house. Nigel had wanted one of those crappy, cheaply built model homes, but Winnie had put her foot down; it was her money, after all. Now she lived in her dream home with her dream man.
“Okay, spill,” Vicky was saying. Winnie didn’t want to spill; she didn’t like when the tea was about her, but she’d forgotten Friendsgiving, and telling Vicky about Dakota would distract her from that.
She launched into the story after an eager “Spare nothing!” from Vicky. Hosting the damn thing had seemed like a good idea a year ago. Now Nigel was going to resent her even more.
By the time Winnie sat down at her desk, Vicky was in full advice mode. She half listened to Vicky’s story about her delinquent sister-in-law who always placed