But John-Henry ignored him, turning in place, stretching up onto tiptoe to scan the dining room. So many people. A quartet was playing, the instruments competing with a mustachioed man who struggled to rise from his seat as he belted out the first words of “Auld Lang Syne.” His companions, middle-aged women with matching mousey lobs of hair, stared up at him admiringly. A child who couldn’t have been older than six darted past John-Henry, screaming as he dragged a tablecloth behind him, while a scrawny guy in a bow tie hurried after him saying, “Ian, stop. Ian, please stop!” At the bar, a glass broke, and a pair of women who had toned and tanned themselves to lizard-like perfection shrieked with laughter. And then John-Henry heard it: the growl, the rumble, the crack like thunder. He pushed past the maître d’ and stepped into the next room.

  Emery loomed over a table, talking in a low voice, but his tone carried. John-Henry knew some of the men and women at the table, but not all of them: Drew Klein, of course, who had been his friend back in high school, with a spare tire around his waist now and a double chin he’d tried to hide with a goatee; his wife, Katie, who apparently had opted for adult braces since the last time John-Henry had seen her; Redgie Moseby, big and bullnecked and red-faced, who hadn’t said a word to John-Henry since Emery had first come back, since that day John-Henry had popped him one; his wife, Kenzi, with her narrow face and Phoebe-from-Friends haircut, which, as far as John-Henry knew, had never really taken off like the Rachel. The others he recognized from school events and from passing them in the Piggly-Wiggly, all of them white, all of them in their late thirties to early forties, all of them in that sneeringly middle-class niche of luxury vehicles and McMansions, all of them, of course, cishet couples.

  Hearing those thoughts, how different he sounded from the person he’d been not so long ago, was like hearing someone in another room. Because if things had been different, he’d be sitting here with Cora, and he’d have a drink in his hand, and he’d be getting louder as Cora tried to shush him, and he’d be getting raunchier, and he’d be looking down Kenzi-from-Friends’s dress, and inside he’d be going at himself with a knife because he was living a lie, and drinking was one way to keep it all at arm’s length.

  “—fucking educate you,” Emery was saying in that dead voice as John-Henry reached them. “Stand up.”

  Redgie’s face got even redder. Drew had a shiny Rudolph nose. The other men at the table—there were four more of them—were torn between looking away, looking down, and trying to glare at Emery. If he noticed the glares, he didn’t give any sign of it.

  “Ree,” John-Henry said, taking his arm at the elbow. “Let’s step outside.”

  “I’m handling something.” He slid his gaze from Drew to Redgie. “Are you going to make me drag your ass out of that chair?”

  “Fuck off,” Redgie said.

  “Get the manager,” Katie was stage-whispering, clawing at Drew. “Go get the manager.”

  “You can’t come in here and ruin our night like this,” Drew said. “You have to leave. They’ll make you leave.”

  “You’re afraid I’ll ruin your night?” Emery pointed to a table farther back in the room, where a cluster of teens was watching the confrontation unfold. Among them, John-Henry recognized Allen Klein, Scotty Moseby, and plenty more little charmers from Wahredua High. “Then you should have kept your reprobate sons on a fucking leash.”

  John-Henry tightened his grip. “Ree, I want to talk to you.”

  Emery’s gaze flicked to him and then back to the table. “Are you proud of this? That your boys act like a pack of wild dogs? That they have to gang up on my son because they’re not brave enough to fight him like men.”

  “You’re full of shit,” Redgie said and took a long drink of his beer.

  “I should have broken your jaw the first time we met,” Emery said. “I never should have let John handle that.”

  “Outside,” John-Henry said. He tried to pull, but it was like trying to uproot a tree. “Right now.”

  “Let go of me,” Emery snapped.

  One of the men at the table burst out laughing, and then several of the women joined in. Another man whispered something to a friend. Drew smirked, leaning back, and said to Katie in a voice meant to carry, “Trouble in paradise.”

  “I’m sure it must be a relief to you, Drew, to have someone else occupy everyone’s attention for a moment, instead of this being yet another night when Katie’s tits spill out and she pisses herself and you find her blowing the busboy behind a dumpster.”

  It was like someone had turned down the volume on the world. A cold draft moved through the room, and John-Henry would have sworn he could hear the candles gutter.

  Emery turned his attention to Redgie. “And, of course, I imagine you’re greatly relieved that, for a while anyway, people will be talking about how Scotty assaulted my son, instead of how he was caught masturbating to the stuffed animals in the preschool.”

  Redge’s face was the color of wine, now, and he made a choked noise. Kenzi looked like she wanted to crawl under the table.

  “That’s enough,” John-Henry said.

  “Why are we just sitting here?” the man who had laughed asked. John-Henry had taken him in earlier, but now he studied him a little more closely: just the right hair, just the right scruff, a square jaw and a wide, amused mouth. “You’re going to let him talk to you like that? He wants to start something, let’s start something.”

  “Casey—” The woman next to him said.

  “No, this’ll be good. I’ve been hearing about this guy since I moved here.” He pushed back his chair and tossed down his napkin. When he stood, he glanced at the men seated on either side of him. “Get up.”

  The other men stood with greater and lesser degrees of reluctance. Even through his escalating panic, John-Henry wanted to laugh. It was like high school all over again: the tough talk, the bravado, and then, when it came down to it, most guys didn’t really want to take a swing. Most.

  Redgie pushed back his chair. Drew was staring at Katie, who was draining a glass of wine, but he scrambled out of his seat a moment later.

  Emery turned, and John-Henry held on to his arm and was towed toward the front door.

  “Listen to me,” he whispered. “Did you think about this? Did you think about what this might mean for Colt?”

  “I’m doing this for Colt.”

  “No, you’re doing this for you, because you’re hurt and you want to punish someone. But this isn’t going to solve anything, Ree. Leaving aside the lawsuits, the fact that you’ll probably get yourself arrested, and the fact that we have been through enough as a family already, you’re not even thinking about the reality of this. What are those boys going to do if you beat the shit out of their dads? Do you think they’re going to shrug and say, ‘Oh well,’ and go on with their lives? They’re going to go after Colt with everything they’ve got. This, up until now, has been bullying. After tonight, though, it’ll be a vendetta.”

  “He’s enrolled in a public school. He’s entitled to his personal safety.”

  “Are you listening to yourself? We couldn’t protect him at basketball practice, could we? We couldn’t protect him tonight.”

  “Then we’ll send him to another school, as you said.”

  “Ree!” They pushed through the front doors, and for a moment, the cold locked both of them in place. The world was silent and dark. “Stop this, please. Stop and think about what this means.”

  Then the doors opened again, heat and light and bodies pressing out into the dark, and Emery shook John-Henry’s hand from his sleeve and moved forward.

  All John-Henry could do was follow him around the side of the building. Emery stopped near the dumpster, where a pile of old pallets was moldering under a blanket of snow, a trail of footprints crisscrossing the concrete apron from Tucker’s back door to the dumpster. A security light carved an orangish wedge out of the night, and it made Emery’s profile alien.

  “Please,” John-Henry whispered. “I know you’re upset. I know you’re furious. But please think about Colt right now. There are other ways to handle this, the proper ways. Please think about what’s best for your son.”

  The frozen amber of his eyes glittered in the security light. His expression didn’t change. And then, without showing how much it might have cost him, he gave a tiny nod.

  John-Henry let out a breath and put himself between Emery and the loose knot of men emerging from the darkness. Drew was in the lead with Redgie at his side. The instigator, Casey, stood a step behind them, and behind him, the other three men made an uneven line.

  “Guys, let’s stop this right here,” John-Henry said. For a moment, it was like the last week had fallen away, and he was who he’d always been. He smiled, the right balance of apology and confidence, and held up a hand. He’d always been everyone’s friend. People called it different things—good energy, charisma, animal magnetism. He could feel it, sometimes, the way people responded to him; it had always been that way, ever since he’d been a child. It had made him popular in high school. It had made him successful in college. It had, in ways he never would have expected, let him be a better police officer. And it had been like his own personal key to Emery Hazard, giving him access to the person he had wanted since he’d been a boy. He relaxed into it now, the strain in his muscles easing, his whole body loose. He felt young. Like high school, he thought. Most guys don’t really want a fight. They just don’t know how to back down. “It went too far in there, just like it went too far earlier with Colt. Let’s not make it any worse.”

  “Do you hear that?” Casey asked. “He’s afraid.”

  John-Henry began, “Redgie—”

  Redgie spat. It missed John-Henry’s sneakers, but only barely. The security light made little orange flames in his eyes. He’d been a big deal in high school; he’d been a wrestler. He’d been a big man around town. And one day, John-Henry had punched him in the face, and now, tonight, John-Henry realized he wanted payback.

  “Drew,” John-Henry said, taking a step closer, his voice softening because it was meant for one person. They went back, all the way back. All the dumbass nights. All the stupid parties. Lots of good memories—shooting bottle rockets off the dock at Drew’s parents’ place at Lake of the Ozarks, and sharing a limo to Prom, Drew pretending to jimmy the built-in liquor cabinet, and isolated memories of afternoons when they’d done nothing but shoot hoops in the driveway and eat way more pizza than anybody ever should. “Come on, man. You know this isn’t the way to go.”

  “You heard what he said about Katie, man,” Casey said.

  “This doesn’t have to happen. Nobody heard him say that stuff except you and your friends. This, what’s about to happen out here, this is only going to make everything worse. For us and for you, Drew.”

  Drew shook his head. He wouldn’t meet John-Henry’s eyes. In the orange light, his split lip looked fat and swollen.

  John-Henry took a step forward. “Drew—”

  Drew stepped back, still not meeting John-Henry’s gaze.

  “Hey, Drew, come on. I mean, I know things have been tense this week, but we’ve been friends for thirty years.”

  Drew gave another shake of his head.

  It was disbelief more than anger that made John-Henry step forward again. “Hey, look at me—”

  Drew shoved him.

  It wasn’t much, but it rocked John-Henry back on his heels. He steadied himself and stared. Drew looked up now. His body was stiff, his shoulders locked. He looked like a kid again, and John-Henry realized with something like shock that Drew didn’t know how to throw a punch. It was like they’d all gone back in time.

  “Fine,” John-Henry said when he recovered himself. He tried to relax back into that old John-Henry, the one who always knew what to say, always knew what to do. “Here’s how this is going to go. You’re going to walk back inside, and you’re going to tell everybody you scared us off—”

  Drew shoved him again. Harder this time. Hard enough to send John-Henry stumbling back.

  Emery made a guttural noise and took a step, but John-Henry waved for him to stay where he was.

  “This is your fault,” Drew said. His voice was shaking. “You deserve it.”

  “Yeah,” Casey said. He was smiling now, the expression big and open. “Tell him.”

  For a moment, John-Henry couldn’t get the words out. “I deserve to have my son hurt and humiliated?”

  “You’re not my friend,” Drew said. “I don’t know who you are. The John-Henry I knew, he’s gone. As soon as he—” Drew stabbed a finger at Emery. “—came back, you were different. I should have known something was wrong. As soon as you started letting him give it to you up the ass, I should have known. Fuck, man, you’ve been around Allen. I let you and Cora babysit him. And then I find out—I mean, Jesus Christ, Somers, little kids? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Everything seemed to come undone. John-Henry felt like he was floating, like he was looking down from a great height. Something was wrong with his ears, maybe. Some sounds seemed too loud: the buzz of the security light, his breathing, the rustle of his coat. But everything else was silent, like he’d gone deaf. Your balance, he thought. The inner ear. Maybe that’s why he felt like he was floating.

  “Fucking pedophile,” Casey added with a smile.

  John-Henry barely heard him. Thoughts zipped through his head—I never touched Allen and You know me and then, like he was tuning in to a stronger signal that drowned out the rest, How dare you? He finally worked his jaw, heard something click, and said, “We’re leaving. Tell your kids to stay away from our son.”

  John-Henry turned, took a step toward Emery, and stopped when Redgie spoke.

  “He’s not even your son,” Redgie said. “He’s some kid you picked up so you could diddle him. Everybody knows why you two wanted him.” A wad of spit struck the back of John-Henry’s coat. “Fucking groomers.”

  The piss-soaked jersey.

  The ruined trophies.

  The spray paint on the side of their house.

  The night in jail, listening to its madhouse sounds.

  The days of humiliation and frustration.

  The years of watching everyone from his old life pull back, close ranks, shut him out.

  Colt, beaten and bloody on the couch.

  Emery’s eyes, and the old, familiar pain.

  John-Henry spun back toward the men and charged. Drew shrank back, tripped over his own feet, and fell flat on his ass. Casey drew back too, the smile falling off his face. Redgie, however, tried to set himself. When John-Henry crashed into him, they both went down. They hit the asphalt still locked together and rolled, Redgie hammering on John-Henry’s ribs, John-Henry pounding one fist against the side of Redgie’s head. It wasn’t martial arts. It wasn’t even the basic grappling he’d learned as a police officer. This was down-and-dirty brawling, uncoordinated, an outlet for all John-Henry’s rage, and he struck blindly and furiously, barely feeling the blows he took in return.

  And then it all changed. Redgie got him into some kind of hold—all those years wrestling finally paying off—and he did something that made John-Henry’s head feel like it was going to pop off his neck. He screamed, moving into the hold, trying to ease the pressure, and only saw Drew sneaking up, one fist raised, out of the corner of his eye. When the punch landed, his world flashed red, then black, and then it came back scrambled as fists and kicks rained down.

  It went on for a long time. Moments of it crystallized like snapshots: Drew sneering through bloody lips, and John-Henry’s distant, satisfied thought that he must have gotten a punch in somehow. Casey kicking him in the side, over and over again, laughing. Redgie pulling his hair to make him move as they dragged him toward the curb. One of the unnamed men wrapping a belt around his hand.

  From far off came Emery’s shouts, which quickly became cries of pain. And then John-Henry couldn’t hear him anymore, and he didn’t know what that meant. His world compacted into pain, cold air, the tang of blood, the rough solidity of asphalt.

  And then someone was shouting, “What’s going on out here?”

  Steps raced away. Someone laughed. A man—a barely conscious part of John-Henry thought it was Redgie—roared in triumph.

  John-Henry’s vision was blurry no matter how many times he blinked to clear his eyes. All he could make out of the shape approaching him was black. Like night had taken form and was moving toward him. The man—it was a man—said something in Spanish, and then, “Don’t move, ok?”

  I won’t, John-Henry tried to say, but the world was getting smaller and smaller, moving away from him. He felt like maybe it had been a joke, that he should laugh. The world was a marble now, small and frozen and just out of reach. And then it disappeared completely, and his last thought was, Where am I going to go?

  17

  John-Henry woke in another place, and for a moment, he didn’t know where he was. Then it came back to him in flashes: the paramedics, the long ride in the ambulance, the fluorescents of the emergency room stabbing his eyes. Now it was morning, and he was in a hospital bed, and the sunlight that came through the window made him think of spiderwebs.

  “You’re awake,” his father said and shook his newspaper for emphasis.

  Pain crowded in on John-Henry’s awareness, and when he tried to shift position, he stifled a groan.

  “I thought you might feel that way,” Glennworth Somerset said. The way he held the paper made it impossible to see his face. “I asked them not to give you anything for the pain until we had a chance to talk.”

  John-Henry lay there and considered that. In spite of the night’s sleep, he felt wrung out. Scratch that, he was exhausted. He thought about trying to prop himself up. Then he decided to ask the most important thing first. “Emery?”

  “Fine, of course.” His father shut the paper with a snap. His cheeks were red. His eyes were bloodshot. “It seems one of your charming new friends borrowed a can of pepper spray from his wife. From what I can piece together, Emery was out before he was in.” He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke again, all he managed was a strangled few words: “You, on the other hand.”