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A dozen empty beer bottles stood on the table, leaving wet ring-stains on the map spread across the table’s surface. There were more beer bottles on the floor, along with a half-empty fifth of gin. He didn’t drink gin. His wife, Jenny, guzzled the stuff.

The f.u.c.king alcoholic b.i.t.c.h.

She’d been a three-martini-a-day girl up until Junior started acting up. Since then she’d skipped the martini gla.s.ses altogether and started pouring gin right into her favorite h.e.l.lo Kitty coffee cup. Every time she took a sip, that stupid cartoon cat seemed to stare at him.

Limping along on one crutch, Jenny hobbled into the kitchen. She couldn’t put weight on the foot, which was understandable if you saw the thing (and Thad had no desire to ever see it again). Jenny’s insistence on keeping Ginny Kitty in hand at all times complicated the crutch-walk even more.

She stopped just past the open doorway between the kitchen and the stairway that led up to the kids’ rooms.

She stared at him. So did that f.u.c.king cat.

“What are we gonna do about that boy of yours?” she asked.

Thadeus shrugged. “Dunno.”

“He’s a bad influence on Stephen and Sammy,” she said. “I don’t know why you let him run wild.”

“Look, I grounded him,” Thadeus said. “What else can we do?”

“You can discipline him,” she said. Thadeus looked away, ashamed. He had disciplined the boy . . . maybe a little too much. He’d hit his own son. Right in the face. Not slapped, but punched. How could he do that to his own flesh and blood? And yet the boy was acting so crazy. Something had to be done.

“Thadeus,” Jenny said, “we have to go, you know we do. They’re almost done, and we haven’t even left yet. We can’t take Junior, and we can’t leave him behind, either.”

He nodded slowly. Maybe Jenny was right. For fourteen years, ever since their first date, he’d been able to count on her for sound advice. Maybe she could see the obvious when he couldn’t, he didn’t know. Maybe she just cared for him enough to give tough love.

He hung his head, stared absently at the back of little Stephen’s head. Junior had always been his favorite. You weren’t supposed to have a favorite child, he knew, yet he couldn’t change the fact that Junior lit up his heart just a little more than the others. Maybe that was why he’d been so lenient.

“All right, Jenny,” Thadeus said. “Get him in here.”

Jenny leaned back so she could shout up the steps to the second floor.

“Junior! Come into the kitchen! Your father and I want to talk to you.”

She leaned forward again, resting heavily on her crutch. They heard Tad’s bedroom door open. It always squeaked. Thadeus kept meaning to oil the hinges, but hadn’t gotten around to it.

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