he continues. “Like, my mom was mad, but my dad was furious. He came straight back and wanted to know where she was, and when I wouldn’t tell him, he . . .” A tear rolls from his eye.
I place a hand on his shoulder. “Did he hit you?” I ask.
He nods soundlessly. We sit in silence.
Ethan pulls a breath from the air, then another. “I knew she was with you,” he says shakily. “I saw you over there”—he looks at the kitchen—“from my room. I finally told him. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” He’s crying now.
“Oh . . .” I say, my hand hovering over his back.
“I just had to get him away from me.”
“I understand.”
“I mean . . .” He drags a finger beneath his nose. “I saw that she’d left your house. So I knew he wouldn’t find her. That’s when he came over here.”
“Yes.”
“I was watching you. I was praying he wouldn’t get mad at you.”
“No, he didn’t.” I just wanted to know if you’d had any visitors this evening, he’d explained. And later: I was looking for my son, not my wife. Lies.
“Then right after he got back home, she . . . she showed up again. She didn’t know he was there already. He was supposed to come back the next day. She rang the doorbell and he made me answer it and invite her in. I was so scared.”
I say nothing, just listen.
“We tried to talk to him. Both of us did.”
“In your parlor,” I murmur.
He blinks. “Did you see?”
“I saw.” I remember them there, Ethan and Jane—Katie—on the love seat, Alistair in a chair across from them. Who knows what goes on in a family?
“It didn’t go very well.” His breath is choppy now. He hiccups. “Dad told her that if she ever came back, he would call the police and have her arrested for harassing us.”
I’m still thinking of that tableau in the window: child, father, “mother.” Who knows what goes on . . .
And then I recall something else.
“The next day . . .” I begin.
He nods, stares at the floor. His fingers writhe in his lap. “She came back. And Dad said he would kill her. He grabbed her throat.”
Silence. The words almost echo. He would kill her. He grabbed her throat. I remember Alistair pinning me to the wall, his hand gripping my neck.
“And she screamed.” I sound quiet.
“Yeah.”
“That’s when I called your house.”
He nods again.
“Why didn’t you tell me what was happening?”
“He was there. And I was scared,” he says, his voice rising, his cheeks wet. “I wanted to. I came here after she left.”
“I know. I know you did.”
“I tried.”
“I know.”
“And then my mom came back from Boston the next day.” He sniffles. “And so did she. Katie. That night. I think she thought Mom might be easier to talk to.” He plants his face in his palms, wipes.
“So what happened?”
He says nothing for a moment, merely looks at me out of the corner of his eye, almost suspicious.
“You really didn’t see?”
“No. I only saw your—I only saw her shouting at someone, and then I saw her with . . .” My hand flutters at my chest. “. . . with something in . . .” I trail off. “I didn’t see anyone else there.”
When he speaks again, his voice is lower, steadier. “They went upstairs to talk. My dad and my mom and her. I was in my room, but I could hear everything. My dad wanted to call the police. She—my—she kept saying that I was her son, and that we should be able to see each other, and that my parents shouldn’t stop us. And Mom was screaming at her, saying she’d make sure she never saw me again. And then everything got quiet. And a minute later I went downstairs and she was—”
His face crumples and he splutters, sobs bubbling deep in his chest and bursting at the surface. He looks to the left, fidgets where he sits.
“She was on the floor. She’d stabbed her.” Now Ethan’s the one pointing at his chest. “With a letter opener.”
I nod, then stop. “Wait—who stabbed her?”
He chokes. “My mom.”
I stare.
“She said she didn’t want someone else to take me”—a hiccup—“take me away.” He sags forward, his hands making a visor over his brow. His shoulders jump and shake as he cries.
My mom. I had it wrong. I had it all wrong.
“She said she’d waited so long to have a child, and . . .”