meant to hit her there—he hadn’t meant to hit her anywhere! On the other hand, he had been trying to push her away, so you couldn’t say it was purely accidental, either. Like the time his father threw his phone at the living room wall. He hadn’t meant to break the phone, or to mess up the wall. But, like Cole’s mother said: “It doesn’t matter what you fucking meant, it’s what you fucking did.”
“I won’t lie and say it didn’t hurt,” Tracy said. “But you know, any time I feel any kind of physical pain I think about our Lord’s three hours on the cross.”
Even weeks later, remembering her full and instant forgiveness could bring a lump to Cole’s throat. He had always wished he could like Tracy more than he did. He’d still have given anything not to have to sit through lessons with her. (“What I don’t know about geography could fill all the tea kettles in China.”) But to see her with different eyes—to feel a new affection and respect for her—was blessing enough.
“What’s wrong? You forget something?”
“Nope.”
“Then why do you keep looking back at the house? Didn’t we go over the checklist? You homesick already?”
PW was teasing. They had already had this conversation. The words hadn’t come easily to Cole, but he’d wanted it clear: he wouldn’t have any problem with Tracy coming along. In fact, it was her not coming along that had become the problem. Wouldn’t it hurt her feelings to be left out?
“You kidding? She’s probably happy as a clam to get us two lugs out of the house a couple days. Besides, she’s no camping fan. The great outdoors is definitely not that woman’s thing.”
But Cole had seen photos of Tracy in the great outdoors. She’d looked pretty happy to him.
“Yeah, well, maybe once upon a time.”
Was it Cole’s imagination or was PW annoyed with him? The suspicion alone hurt his stomach.
“But don’t take my word for it, Cole. Ask her yourself.”
“Sleep on the ground? Wake up with the birdies? Snakes and bats and creepy-crawlies everywhere? Yuck!” It was true she’d gone camping many times in the past and enjoyed it. But now: “I guess I’m getting soft in my old age.”
It was something, Cole thought, the way adults could almost always find ways of not telling the truth without actually lying.
So why couldn’t they all go on a different trip, then? It was his mother’s voice he heard asking this, and he thought how it wouldn’t have happened back then. He couldn’t recall ever going on any trip with just his father—a thought that was immediately overshadowed by a more significant one: he was starting to think of PW and Tracy as his parents.
This was another subject he was afraid might come up sometime in the next three days.
“We’re not going to push you, son,” PW had said. “We just want you to promise you’ll devote some serious time to thinking and praying on it.” And Cole had promised, but in fact he’d been mostly avoiding thinking and praying on whether or not to be adopted.
It felt good to be wanted—and PW and Tracy had a way of making him feel like the most wanted boy in the world. In most ways they were easier to live with than his parents had been. They were certainly a lot happier than his parents had been. He had heard them quarrel a few times, but he had never heard them curse each other, and he could not imagine Tracy walking out on PW. He knew how happy he would make them both if he agreed to be adopted. And why shouldn’t he make them happy? They loved him, they were kind to him, and what could there be to stand in the way? It wasn’t like anyone else wanted him.
And if he could have agreed to be adopted without having to see his parents’ horrified and wounded faces, then probably Cole would have done so.
There had been a time in his childhood when he used to pretend quite a lot that his parents were not his real parents. And sometimes then, when he was out in public, he would see a particularly cool-looking couple—a couple who looked like they never fought and never worried about money—and he would spin out fantastic reasons why they, his true parents, had had to give him up. (“It would’ve been wrong to expose a child to the dangers of our lives as secret agents.”) It was