“Just the service. Orders.”

“Come on, man.” Richard tried to put the smile back on. “Just for a few minutes. Nobody has to know. What can it hurt?”

“No can do,” the priggish little man said stiffly.

“Don’t be such a jerk,” Richard snapped and knew he’d pushed too far. Even Rudolf suddenly got a spine.

“That’ll be enough out of you, kid. I’m sorry your aunt or whatever-”

“You morons get your AA degree at community college and a job bullying kids in juvie, and you have the nerve to come to my aunt or whatever’s graveside, my mother’s funeral, for God’s sake-”

“Rich, stop. Be cool. Come on, brother.” Dylan took his arm in both hands, the cuffs making it awkward. He shouldered in between Richard and the guards.

“It’s okay, Rich. Thanks. But they can make it worse back at juvie.” To the guards he said, “Give my brother a break. The guy just lost somebody. Don’t be such pricks. Back off, why don’t you?”

The two men backed off a couple of paces. Rudolph lit a cigarette. “It’s no biggie, Rich. I’m out of there in a couple years anyway. Eigh teen and I go to the big house. What a trip, huh? Come on, brother, you grieve for Sara. I’ll be okay. It’s okay.” Dylan leaned close, his forehead nearly touching Richard’s, his manacled hands still firm around Richard’s arm. “They’re not worth it, Rich. Take it from me. They aren’t worth the sweat.”

Richard breathed in slowly and deeply and tried to blow out some of the ice rime that had formed around his heart. “I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

Dylan was wearing a cheap suit coat Drummond had given him-or more likely lent all the boys-for formal outings. Richard put his hand on his brother’s wrist, causing the jacket’s sleeve to slide up exposing Dylan’s forearm.

“Tell me this is a joke,” he said, pulling Dylan’s arm out straight, staring at the ink marks on the white flesh.

Dylan said nothing. “Shit,” Richard said. “Why don’t you just have your bros write ‘lowlife ex con’ across your forehead and be done with it? You know what this does? This brands you as a piece of shit. When you get out, everybody will see this and think you’re a scumbag. Shit.”

Richard turned away and stared into the sun, trying to burn out the cold that was coming back into him. “Pumping iron and getting prison tats. You proud of yourself?” he asked without turning back.

“Let it go, Rich. It was stupid. I was high. Let it go.”

“High.”

“Let it go, man.”

There was something in Dylan’s voice that turned Richard around to face him. Dylan felt dangerous.

“Sure,” Richard said. He smiled and clapped Dylan on the shoulder. “Sure.” He walked with his brother and his brother’s keepers to the paddy wagon, an old station wagon tricked out with a screen and bolts in the floor to anchor chains and manacles.

“The big house,” Dylan had said. Richard thought he’d heard a hint of pride or boasting in the words. Like a baseball player in the minor leagues talking about going to “the show.”

Pumping iron and tattoos.

He had to get Dylan out while he was still Dylan, still his brother. If it meant kissing Phil Maris’s well-connected ass, so be it.

“Screw Phil Maris. He was nobody,” Rich said. “His aunt wasn’t even anybody; she just happened to be the governor’s secretary. The bastard should have done it years ago. You were eleven for Christ’s sake.”

“He’s right, Dylan. I’m glad Mr. Maris worked this out but you don’t owe him anything.” This from the backseat of the car, where a man in a heavy wool suit was sitting. The man who’d come with Rich. Mr. Leonard from the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Dylan tuned them both out and watched the fields pass by through the car’s window. He wasn’t shackled, he wasn’t behind a heavy mesh security screen, and there was a handle on the inside so he could open and close his door. He could get out any time he wanted.

He was free.

A sick sort of guilt lay in the pit of his stomach like a piece of rotten food. Why wasn’t he brimming over with gratitude toward Phil? No big house, no state pen. Freedom. Anybody else would be high, back slaps all around, telling stories of what they would do when they got to the nearest bar, or restaurant, or woman.

Dylan just felt scared. He wouldn’t admit it to Rich or the guy in the backseat-he wasn’t really even admitting it to himself, not in words-but mostly he wanted to go home, back to Drummond. Not really. He didn’t really want to be there. But in Drummond he knew the rules, knew who he was, how to act. What would happen outside when people found out he was the infamous Butcher Boy? Inside he had his pals; they watched each other’s back. Dylan had status; an old-timer in a short-time facility.

Outside would they beat the crap out of him? Keep their kids inside when he walked by? Set their dogs on him? His mom and dad had had a lot of friends. Would they try to get him put back inside? There was no place for the likes of him in the real world. He belonged behind bars. Rapists, thieves, wife beaters, murderers-they were his people.

“ Rochester ’s out,” he said suddenly. “ Minnesota is out.” He had no idea where he meant to go. Other than visiting California when he was four to see some cousin, he’d never been anywhere more exotic than Iowa.

Silence followed his announcement. The feeling of guilt spread like poison up Dylan’s esophagus. Maybe he was carsick, but he didn’t think so. The silence stretched. Miles slid by, fields green with summer air so clear and sweet the birds sang with it. Dylan was going to cry if he didn’t watch it. Like a little kid.

“I kept the house like it was,” Rich said finally. “I thought you’d want to come home.”

Why would anybody think he wanted to go home? Home is where the heart is.

Dylan pictured his heart, out of his body, lying in the bloody hallway beside the mutilated corpse of his sister. The vision was as brief as it was toxic. He shoved the picture back into the recesses of his mind. These were things he’d worked at not seeing for years, worked to keep Kowalski from dragging up. He’d gotten good at it.

He said nothing, just kept looking out of the window. Cows were grazing by the road. If he could choose a life, that would be the one he picked, the life of a cow munching grass never knowing one day it would be hamburger.

“I can see why you might not want to go back to Rochester, son,” the man in the backseat said carefully.

The “son” grated on Dylan. He was nobody’s son.

“Reentering life on the outside is hard. Lots of boys don’t acclimatize. Maybe even most boys. They end up back inside. I hope that’s not the case with you, but it could be.”

Dylan thought about that for a while. It wasn’t news. In his seven years in Drummond he’d seen the revolving door spinning, kids in, and out, and in again. Mostly, they came back boasting about the time they’d had outside, like they were sailors back on the ship bragging about their conquests during shore leave. He could do that-boost a car or get in a fist fight and get himself thrown back in jail. The state or federal pen this time. He was eighteen.

“Guaranteed,” Dylan said.

“Why? You’ve got no more family to do in but me,” Rich said. He laughed, but the words were sharp as knives. Dylan had hurt his feelings; he’d not appreciated what his brother had done for him, continued to do for him.

“Fistfights,” he said succinctly. “In Rochester I’ll be fighting all the time. Eventually, I’ll kill somebody.” There was no boast there; it was just fact. Dylan was big and he was strong. Hit somebody wrong, and they were dead.

Nobody argued with that.

After a time Rich said, “I got you enrolled in the junior college where I went. You don’t want to sling hash all your life do you?”

“You have to go to college, son,” said the brown suit from the backseat. “Phil Maris said you were one of the smartest kids he’d ever taught. You don’t want to waste that on fistfights and the like.”