She set down the spoon, placed it carefully alongside the knife. “If you thought he might have been the one doing all that crazy stuff, maybe you could have intervened, somehow. Helped him to get help.” She broke off. “But then, these are the questions I ask myself. Why didn’t I make him get help? Why didn’t I intervene? I keep asking myself whether there was something I could have done that would have changed things. Stratton’s supposed to have all these great mental health programs, but suddenly he wasn’t eligible for them anymore-that’s a real Catch-22, isn’t it? Because of a mental illness, you quit and lose your right to treatment for your mental illness. That isn’t right.”
Warily: “It’s not right.”
“And because of these decisions-decisions you and I and God knows how many other people made-my daddy’s dead.” Cassie was weeping now, tears spilling down both cheeks.
“Cassie,” Nick said. He took her hand in his, and fell silent. Her hand looked pale and small in his. Then a thought came to him, and he felt as if he had swallowed ice. His hand, the hand with which he tried to comfort her, was the hand that had held the gun.
“But you want to know something?” Cassie said haltingly. “When I got the news about-you know-”
“I know.”
“I felt like I’d run into a brick wall. But, Nick, I felt something else too. I felt relieved. Do you understand?”
“Relieved.” He repeated the word numbly.
“All the hospitalizations, all the relapses, all the agony he’d endured. Pain that’s not physical but every bit as real. He didn’t like the place he was in-the world that, more and more, he had to live in. It wasn’t your world or my world, it was his world, Nick, and it was a cold and scary place.”
“It had to have been hell, for both of you.”
“And then one day he disappears. Then he’s dead. Killed-shot dead, God knows why. But it was almost like an act of mercy. Do you ever think that things happen for a reason?”
“I think some things happen for a reason,” Nick said slowly. “But not everything. I don’t think Laura died for any particular reason. It just happened. To her. To us. Like a piano that just falls out of the sky and flattens you.”
“Shit happens, you’re saying.” Cassie palmed away the tears on her face. “But that’s never the whole story. Shit happens, and it changes your life, and then what do you do? Do you just go on as if nothing happened? Or do you face it?”
“I choose option A.”
“Yeah. I see that.” Cassie rumpled her spiky hair with a hand. “There’s a parable of Schopenhauer’s, it’s called ‘Die Stachelschweine’-the porcupines. You’ve got these porcupines, and it’s winter, and so they huddle together for warmth-but when they get too close, of course, they hurt each other.”
“Allegory alert,” Nick said.
“You got it. Too far, and they freeze to death. Too near, and they bleed. We’re all like that. Same with you and Lucas.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a porcupine, all right.”
“Got to hand it to you Conover men,” Cassie said. “You’re as well defended as a medieval castle. Got your moat, got your boiling oil over the gate, got your castle keep. ‘Bring it on,’ right? Hope you got plenty of provisions in the larder.”
“All right, babe. Since you see so much more clearly than I do, let me ask you something. How much do you think I have to worry about my son?”
“Well, some. He’s a stoner, as you know. Probably gets high a couple of times a day. Which can do a number on your ability to concentrate.”
“A couple of times a day? You sure?”
“Oh please. He’s got two bottles of Visine on his dresser. He’s got Febreze fabric spray in his closet.”
Nick looked blank.
“Fabric freshener. You spritz it on your clothing to remove the smell of the herb. Then he’s got these Dutch Master leavings in his wastebasket. For making a blunt, okay? This is all Pothead 101 stuff.”
“Christ,” said Nick. “He’s sixteen years old.”
“And he’s going to be seventeen. And then eighteen. And that’s going to be rough too.”
“A year ago you wouldn’t have recognized him. He was this totally straight, popular athlete.”
“Just like his dad.”
“Yeah, well. My mom didn’t die when I was fifteen.”
“What makes it worse is if you can’t talk about it.”
“He’s a kid. It’s hard for him to talk about stuff like that.”
Cassie looked at him.
“What?”
“I wasn’t just talking about Lucas,” she said quietly. “I was talking about you.”
A deep breath. “You like metaphors? Here’s one. You know the cartoon coyote that’s always racing off the edge of the cliff?”
“Yes, Nick. Wile E. Coyote. An odd role model for the CEO of Acme Industries, I’d have thought.”
“And he’s in midair, but his legs are still pumping and he’s moving along fine. But then-he looks down, and he sinks like a stone. Moral of the story? Never fucking look down.”
“Beautiful,” Cassie said, her voice as astringent as witch hazel. “Just beautiful.” Her eyes flashed. “Have you noticed that Lucas can’t even look at you? And you can barely look at him. Now why is that?”
“If you bring up those Black Forest porcupines again, I’m out of here.”
“He’s lost his mom, and he desperately needs to bond with his father. But you’re not around, and when you are, you’re not there. You’re not exactly verbally expressive, right? He needs you to be the healer, but you can’t do it-you don’t know how. And the more isolated he feels, the more he turns on you, and the angrier you get.”
“The armchair psychologist,” Nick said. “Another one of your imaginative ‘readings.’ Nice guess, though.”
“No,” she said. “Not a guess. He pretty much told me.”
“He told you? I can’t even imagine that.”
“He was stoned, Nick. He was stoned, and he started to cry, and it came out.”
“He was stoned? In your presence?”
“Lit up a nice fat doobie,” Cassie said, with a half-smile. “We shared it. And we had a long talk. I wish you could have heard him. He has a lot on his mind. A lot he hasn’t been able to say to you. A lot you need to hear.”
“You smoked marijuana with my son?”
“Yes.”
“That is incredibly irresponsible. How could you do that?”
“Whoa, Daddy, you’re missing the big picture here.”
“Lucas has a problem with this shit. You were supposed to help him. Not encourage him, goddammit. He looks up to you!”
“I told him to lay off the weed, at least on school nights. I think he’s going to.”
“Goddammit! You haven’t got a clue, have you? I don’t care what kind of a fucked-up childhood you had. This is my son you’re dealing with. A sixteen-year-old boy with a drug problem. What part of this isn’t registering?”
“Nick, be careful,” she said, in a low, husky voice. Her face was turning a deep red, but her expression remained oddly fixed, a stone mask. “We had a very open and honest conversation, Luke and I. He told me all kinds of things.” Now she turned to look at him with hooded eyes.
Nick was torn between fury and fear, wanting to lay into her for what she’d done, getting high with Lucas-and yet frightened of what she might have found out from Lucas.
Lucas, who might-or might not-have heard shots one night.
Who might-or might not-have overheard his father and Eddie discussing what had really happened that night.
“Like what?” he managed to say.
“All kinds of things,” she whispered darkly.