I look at Jase. His lips are slightly parted and he’s staring at Clay in fascination. Sort of the way you’d look at a striking cobra.

“Then you could appeal to the people, ask them to call or write or send e-mails directly to your office if they still want you as their senator. We in the business call that the ‘Send in Your Box Tops’ speech. People get all het up and excited because they feel part of the process. Your office gets besieged—you lay low for a few days, then call another conference and humbly thank the citizens of Connecticut for their faith in you and pledge to be worthy of it. It’s a killer moment, and at least fifty percent of the time, it makes you a shoo-in at election time,” he concludes, grinning at Mom triumphantly.

She too is staring at him with her mouth open. “But…” she says.

Jase and I are silent.

“C’mon,” Clay urges. “It makes perfect sense. It’s the logical way to go.”

Jase gets to his feet. I am pleased to notice that he’s taller than Clay. “Everything you say makes sense, sir. I guess it’s logical. But with all due respect, you’re out of your fucking mind. Come on, Sam. Let’s go home.”

Chapter Fifty

The day has dimmed into twilight by the time we leave the house. Jase’s long legs eat up the driveway and I’m nearly jogging to keep up with him. We’ve almost reached the Garretts’ kitchen steps before I come to a standstill. “Wait.”

“Sorry. I was practically towing you along. I feel like I need a shower after all that. Holy hell, Sam. What was that?”

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.” How could Clay have said all that, smooth as Kentucky bourbon, and Mom just sitting there as if she’d already drunk the bottle? I rub my forehead. “Sorry,” I mutter again.

“It’d be good if you’d stop apologizing right about now,” he tells me.

I take a deep breath, looking down at his shoes. “It’s about all I’ve got. To fix things.”

Jase has these huge feet. They dwarf mine. He’s wearing his usual sneakers, and I’m in flip-flops. We stand toe to toe for a minute, then he edges one big foot in between my smaller ones.

“You were great back there,” I say, hanging on to what’s true.

He jams his hands in his pockets. “Are you kidding? You were the one who called him on his bullshit every time I started to get hypnotized by his wrong-is-right, up-is-down arguments.”

“Only because I’d heard ’em all before. It took me weeks to see through the hypnotism.”

Jase shakes his head. “Suddenly the whole thing was a photo op. How’d he even do that? I get why Tim was so mental about that guy.”

We’re quiet, looking back at my house.

“My mother,” I start, then stop. Despite what Clay says, that I’m a casual turncoat daughter, this isn’t easy. How can Jase ever know, really understand, all those years when she did teach us well? Or the best she could.

But he waits, patient and thoughtful, until I can say more.

“She’s not a monster. I want you to know that. It doesn’t really matter because what she did was so wrong. But she’s not an evil person. Just”—my voice wobbles—“not all that strong.”

Jase reaches out, pulls the elastic band from my hair, letting it slip free over my shoulders. I’ve missed that gesture so much.

I didn’t look over at Mom when we walked out. No point to it. Even before, when I did look at her face, I had no idea what to read there. “I’m guessing Mom won’t want me showing up for dinner at the B and T tonight. Or when I’ll be welcome at home.”

“Well, you’re welcome in mine.” He draws me in close, hipbone to hipbone. “We can just listen to that suggestion of George’s. You can move into my room, sleep in my bed. I thought that was a brilliant idea the minute he came up with it.”

“George just mentioned the room, not the bed,” I say.

“He did tell you I never peed in my bed. That was incentive right there.”

“There are those of us who would take clean sheets as a given. We might need more incentive.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Jase says.

“Sailor Supergirl!” George shouts through the screen. “I’m going to have a baby brother! Or a sister, but I want a brother. We have a picture. Come see, come see, come see!”

I turn to Jase. “It’s confirmed, then?”

“Alice shook it out of Mom with her ninja nurse tactics. Kind of like Tim with you, I guess.”

George returns to the screen, squashing some printout against it. “See. This is my baby brother. He kinda looks like a storm cloud now, but he’s gonna change a lot because that’s what Mommy says babies do best of anything..”

Jase says, “Stand back, buddy,” nudging the door open wide enough for us to pass through.

I haven’t seen Joel for a while. Where he once projected all laidback cool, now he’s edgy, stalking around the kitchen. Alice churns out pancakes and the younger kids sit at the table, watching as if their older siblings are Nickelodeon.

We walk in just as Joel’s asking, “Why does Dad have that thing in his windpipe? He was breathing fine. Are we going backward?”

Alice edges a small, flat, very dark pancake off the pan. “The nurses explained all this.”

“Not in English. Please, Al, translate?”

“It’s because of the deep vein thrombosis—kind of a clot he got. They put him in those inflatable boots for that, because they didn’t want to give him anti-coag drugs—”

“English,” Joel reiterates.

“Stuff that makes his blood thinner. Because of the head injury. They put him in the boots, but someone ignored or didn’t notice the order that they were to go on and off every two hours.”

“Can we sue this someone?” Joel asks angrily. “He was talking, getting better, now he’s worse off than ever.”

Alice chips four more skinny charcoal briquette-looking pancakes off the pan, then adds some butter. “It’s good they caught it, Joey.” She looks up, seeming to notice for the first time that I’m standing beside Jase.

“What are you doing here?”

“She belongs here,” Jase says. “Drop it, Alice.”

Andy starts to cry. “He doesn’t look like Dad anymore.”

“He does so. Look like Dad,” George insists stoutly. He hands me the computer printout. “This is our baby.”

“He’s very cute,” I tell George, scrutinizing what does, indeed, look like a hurricane off the Bahamas.

“Dad’s all skinny,” Andy continues. “He smells like the hospital. Looking at him freaks me out. It’s like he’s this old man suddenly? I don’t want an old man. I want Daddy.”

Jase winks at her. “He just needs more of Alice’s pancakes, Ands. He’ll be fine then.”

“Alice makes the worst pancakes known to humankind,” Joel observes. “These are like coasters.”

“I’m cooking,” Alice observes sharply. “You’re what? Critiquing? Doing a restaurant review? Go get takeout, if you want to be useful. Ass-hat.”

Jase glances around at his siblings, then back at me. I understand his hesitation. Though things at the Garretts’ are unbalanced—mealtimes off, everyone more cranky, it all still seems normal. Not right to detonate the bomb of some big announcement. Like barging into Mr. and Mrs. Capulet’s argument about whether they are overpaying the nurse with “We now interrupt this ordinary life with an epic tragedy.”

“Yo.” The screen door opens, letting in Tim, laden with four pizza boxes, two cartons of ice cream, and the blue-zipped bag in which the Garretts keep the contents of the till from the hardware store balanced on top.

“Hello, hot Alice. Wanna put on your uniform and check my pulse?”

“I never play games with little boys,” Alice snaps without turning around from her position at the stove, where she’s still doggedly turning out pancakes.

“You should. We’re full of energy. And mischief.”

Alice doesn’t bother to answer.

Taking the boxes, Jase begins piling them on the table, batting away his younger siblings’ questing hands. “Wait till I get plates, guys! Jeez. How was the take at the end of the day?”