Graham’s first thought was to trick the boy into confessing about the ’phalting but that seemed to go against the instinct that Anna had told him to rely on. He thought back to his dishpan reflections: dialogue, not confrontation.

The boy was silent. The only noise was the click of the controller and the electronic bass beat of the sound track of the game, as a cartoon character strolled along a fantastical road.

Okay, get to it.

“Joey, can I ask you why you skip school?”

“Skip school?”

“Why? Are there problems with teachers? Maybe with some other students?”

“I don’t skip.”

“I heard from the school. You skipped today.”

“No, I didn’t.” He kept playing on the computer.

“I think you did.”

“No,” the boy said credibly. “I didn’t.”

Graham saw a major flaw with the dialogue approach. “You’ve never skipped?”

“I don’t know. Like, once I got sick on the way to school and I came home. Mom was at work and I couldn’t get her.”

“You can always call me. My company’s five minutes from here and fifteen minutes from school. I can be there in no time.”

“But you can’t sign me out.”

“Yes, I can. I’m on the list. Your mother put me on the list.” Didn’t the boy know that? “Tell you what, Joey, shut that off.”

“Shut it off?”

“Yeah. Shut it off.”

“I’m nearly to-”

“No. Come on. Shut it off.”

He continued to play.

“Or I’ll unplug it.” Graham rose and reached for the cord.

Joey stared at him. “No! That’ll dump the memory. Don’t. I’ll save it.”

He continued to play for a moment-a dense twenty seconds-and then hit some buttons, and with a deflating computer-generated sound the screen froze.

Graham sat down on the bed, near the boy.

“I know you and your mother talked about your accident today. Did you tell her you skipped school?” Graham was wondering if Brynn knew and hadn’t told him.

“I didn’t skip school.”

“I talked to Mr. Raditzky. He says you forged the note from your mother.”

“He’s lying.” Eyes evasive.

“Why would he lie?”

“He doesn’t like me.”

“He sounded pretty concerned about you.”

“You just don’t get it.” Apparently thinking that this was irrefutable proof of his innocence, he turned back to the frozen screen. A creature of some sort bounced up and down. Running in place. The boy eyed the game controller. He didn’t go for it.

“Joey, somebody from school saw you ’phalting on Elden Street.”

The boy’s eyes flickered. “They’re lying too. It was Rad, right? He’s making that up.”

“I don’t think they were, Joey. I think they saw you on your board, going forty miles an hour down Elden Street when you wiped out.”

He bounced onto his bed, past Graham, and pulled a book off the shelf.

“So you didn’t tell your mother you cut and you didn’t tell her you were ’phalting, did you?”

“I wasn’t ’phalting. I was just boarding. I went off the parking lot steps.”

“Is that where you had the accident today?”

A pause. “Not really. But I don’t ’phalt.”

“Have you ever?”

“No.”

Graham was at a complete loss. This was going nowhere.

Instinct…

“Where’s your board?”

Joey glanced at Graham and said nothing. Turned back to the book.

“Where?” his stepfather asked adamantly.

“I don’t know.”

Graham opened the closet, where the boy’s skateboard was sitting on a pile of athletic shoes.

“No more boarding this month.”

“Mom said two days!”

Graham thought Brynn had said three. “One month. And you have to promise that you’re never going to ’phalt again.”

“I don’t ’phalt!”

“Joey.”

“This’s such bullshit!”

“Don’t say that to me.”

“Mom doesn’t mind.”

Was that true? “Well, I do.”

“You can’t stop me. You’re not my father!”

Graham felt an urge to argue. To explain about authority and hierarchy and family units, his and the boy’s respective roles in the household. An argument on the merits, though, seemed like an automatic loss.

Instinct, he reminded himself.

Okay. Let’s see what happens.

“Are you going to tell me the truth?”

“I am telling the truth,” the boy raged and started to cry.

Graham’s heart was pounding furiously. Was he being honest? This was so hard. He tried to keep his voice steady. “Joey, your mother and I love you very much. We were both worried sick about you when we heard you’d been hurt.”

“You don’t love me. Nobody does.” The tears stopped as quickly as they’d started and he slouched back, reading his book.

“Joey…” Graham leaned forward. “I’m doing this because I care about you.” He smiled. “Come on. Brush your teeth, put on your PJs. Time for bed.”

The boy didn’t move. His eyes were frantically scanning words he wasn’t even seeing.

Graham rose and left the room, carrying the skateboard. He headed downstairs, fighting the urge with every step to go back and apologize and beg the boy to be happy and forgive him.

But instinct won. Graham continued to the ground floor, put the skateboard on the top shelf of the closet.

Anna watched him. She seemed amused. Graham didn’t think anything was funny.

“When’ll Brynn be home?” his mother-in-law asked.

He looked at his watch. “Soon, I’d guess. She’ll probably get dinner but she’ll eat in the car.”

“She shouldn’t do that. Not on those roads at night. You look down for one minute, pick up your sandwich and there’s a deer in front of you. Or a bear. Jamie Henderson nearly hit one. It was just there.”

“I heard that, I think. Big one?”

“Big enough.” A nod toward the ceiling. “How’d it go?”

“Not good.”

She continued to give him a half-smile.

“What?” he asked, irritated.

“It’s a start.”

Graham rolled his eyes. “I don’t think so.”

“Trust me. Sometimes just delivering a message is the important thing. Whatever that message is. Remember that.”

He picked up the phone and dialed Brynn again. It went right to voice mail. He tossed the phone on the table and stared absently at the TV screen. Thinking again about the yellow jackets. How he’d been going about his business, wheeling a big shaggy plant, enjoying the day, never realizing that he’d trod on the nest ten feet back.

Never realizing it until the hard little dots, with their fiery stingers, were all over him.

He thought now: And why does it even matter?

Just let it go.

Graham reached for the remote control. Upstairs, a door slammed.

BRYNN AND MICHELLE were making their way through scruffy tangled forest about three hundred yards north of the Feldmans’ house. Here the trees were denser, mostly lush pine, spruce and fir. The view of the lake was cut off.

The car alarm had been an unfortunate mistake. But, since it had happened, Brynn hoped that she’d turned it around to work to their advantage, making the men think that it was an intentional distraction and that the women were escaping by canoe to the far shore of the lake. In fact, though, they’d used the boat only to paddle downstream a short distance and cross to the opposite shore of the creek. They’d propped up life preservers to look like two huddling passengers and then shoved the canoe into the speedy current, which propelled the vessel into the lake.

They’d then hurried as best they could, given Michelle’s ankle, away from the lake house enclave, north toward Marquette State Park.

When the gunfire came, as Brynn expected, she was ready and let go a fierce, harrowing scream. Then abruptly stopped as if shot. She’d known the men would be half deafened and, with the confusing echoes from the hills, couldn’t tell that the scream had come from someplace else entirely. The trick might not fool them for long but she was sure she’d bought some time.

“Can we stop now?” Michelle asked.

“Why, does your ankle hurt?”