Twenty

After any social engagement, Bonnie and I would typically start our debrief once we were in the car and driving away. Maybe it would be a comment about how neither of us could eat the undercooked fish, or the kid who was a monster, or how the husband always cut off his wife before she could finish a single sentence. Not to give you the impression that we were the nastiest, most backstabbing couple in history—we would just as often talk about how that was the best chocolate mousse we'd ever tasted, or how she was the funniest person we'd met in a long time, or that we really clicked and should have them over to our place as soon as possible.

But we didn't do any of that because Rachel was in the car. It was Rachel, in fact, who was ready to start talking immediately once we were driving away from seeing Trent and Melanie.

"Can I get some bugs?" she asked.

"Say again?" I said, looking over my shoulder at her in the backseat.

"Bugs," Rachel said again. "Amanda has all kinds of them. Dead ones and live ones. She's going to be a lemontologist."

"An entomologist," Bonnie said.

"What?"

"You said lemontologist."

"That would be someone who studies citrus fruits," I offered.

Rachel carried on. "She used to have this glass thing full of dirt where ants lived but she had to get rid of it because of her dad. Can I get one of those?"

I glanced over at Bonnie, who was biting her bottom lip. I could guess what she was thinking. The last thing she'd want would be to discourage our daughter from pursuing a new interest, especially when she'd seemed at loose ends lately. And the second last thing Bonnie would want is a wide variety of insects, living and/or dead, taking up residence in our house.

"She has dead butterflies," Rachel continued. "With their wings spread out and they were under glass, held there with pins."

Bonnie asked, "How does Amanda's mom like having all those icky bugs in the house?"

Rachel adopted a lecturing tone. "Mom, bugs are not icky. They are part of the envierment. The world would die without bugs. And her mom is fine with it. It's her dad who hates them. That's why they're in the garage. Isn't that sexist, Mom? Thinking girls are all scared of bugs and boys aren't?"

The kid was on fire today. I had to admit that I was pleased and was betting Bonnie might be, too. This might be just what Rachel needed. A new focus.

Although, as Bonnie said after Rachel had bolted from the car when we got home, "Why couldn't Amanda have had a big fucking dollhouse?"

So later, as we got ready for bed, we debriefed. At least, up to a point. I did not share the details of my conversation with Trent.

"She was pretty shaken up, maybe even more than Trent," Bonnie said of Melanie. "She put on a good front for you guys, but when I was in the kitchen with her she was still having a hard time with it. She put dressing on the salad a second time, forgetting she'd already done it."

"It was a little on the wet side," I said.

"She's terrified that something like what happened Monday could happen again. If not a bomber, then a shooter. It's like a virus, a contagion, spreading through the country. Hardly a week goes by you don't hear about another one."

"Did she know Trent had a gun at school?"

"She not only knew about it, she'd encouraged it. And Melanie said some wonderful things about you. How if you hadn't done what you did, it could have been a much bigger tragedy. I think it hit her hard because she knew Mark LeDrew."

That was news to me, but it shouldn't have come as a surprise. He'd been a student at her husband's school. They lived in the same town.

"They hired him one summer to look after their place, the year she and Trent rented a house up in Maine for all of July and half of August."

"She say what he was like?"

"Seemed like a nice kid, but kind of sad. She got the impression maybe it had something to do with his father, who was pretty distant, not very involved." Bonnie paused before saying, "You and Trent seemed to have a lot to talk about."

I shrugged, like, after what we'd been through, what would you expect?

"It's just, when we came out, you both had this look."

I frowned. "We were talking about what happened, and when you came out, it felt like time to move on to something else."

I was in nothing but my boxers and Bonnie, who had herself just stripped down to her underwear, slipped her arms around me and said, "I know you did what you had to do, and I'm sorry if it seems like I've been punishing you for it. I just..."

She bit her lip and held back tears. "You're a better person than I am."

"That's not true."

"You put yourself out there. It's who you are."

She held me tighter, then moved her hands around to my butt cheeks, gave them a squeeze, then moved one hand around to the front and down into my boxers, where there was, to my surprise, a stirring. I'd been so stressed lately, I wasn't sure I had it in me.

"Give me one minute," I said, and mimed brushing my teeth. "Don't start without me."

As I headed for the bathroom, Bonnie took off what few clothes she still had on and threw back the covers. As I was putting toothpaste on my brush, I heard a ding.

Someone got a text.

"It's you," Bonnie said from the bedroom.

I brushed, spat, rinsed. I was drying my hands when Bonnie appeared in the doorway, my phone in her hand.

"What's this?" she asked.

She handed me my phone. It was a text from Jack, next door.

Thought it through. Weve got a deal. Will go to the bank Monday. Will provide funds as requested. Those fish wont know what hit em.

"What deal? What money?" She had one hand on her naked hip.

I licked my lips, trying to figure out what to say. The only thing I could think of was the truth.

"He's buying the boat," I said.

Bonnie blinked, looked at me like she wasn't sure she'd heard that right. "Your boat? Our boat?"

"He was interested, and I thought, we didn't use it all that much this summer, and it's just sitting in the driveway, so I—"

"How much did you sell him the boat for?"

"Ten thousand."

"Ten thousand? What did we pay for that—"

"It doesn't matter. It's a used boat, it's not in perfect con—"

"So you decided you would make a decision like that without discussing it? Rachel loves that boat. She loves it when we go up to the lake."

The only thing I could think of now was a lie. And I had what I thought was a good one.

"It's the lawsuit," I said. "I'm probably going to need a lawyer, and they're not cheap."

"That's crazy. The school board, the union, they'll have your back."

"Yeah, but if they don't, I need—"

"Even if they don't—Jesus, we could have found a way to pay for that without selling the boat. You're doing it again, making decisions without—" She was too angry to finish the sentence, but then started up again. "Have you actually spoken to a lawyer yet?"

"No."

"Picked one out?"

"No. I'll start Monday, get recommendations."

She looked angry, sympathetic, and flabbergasted, all at once. She took a moment to calm herself and said, "You have to talk to the union. Look, I'm not in it anymore but I know someone. I'll make a call, put him in touch with you."

Now that I'd committed myself to a lie about legal representation, I hoped she was right, that my legal costs would be covered, given that I needed the ten grand for something very different.

Bonnie looked at the text again. "What's he mean here? Getting funds as requested? What's that?"

"I asked... I asked Jack if he could do it in cash."

Bonnie was briefly speechless. Then, "You want him to take out ten thousand in cash?"

"I don't know. I guess I didn't want the money going into our account."

"Why?"

"Look, maybe I wasn't thinking straight. I thought, it goes into your account, it looks like income, I don't know. Anyway, he seems okay with it."

"So once you get it, you going to go into a lawyer's office and dump a pile of hundreds onto his desk? He'll think you're a drug dealer or a hit man or something."

That almost made me laugh. "A hit man."

"It's not funny. Christ, when it rains, it—"

Before she could finish, the phone was ringing. Not the one in my hand, but her own cell, on her side of the bed.

"Jesus. What now?"

She grabbed her phone, put it to her ear.

"Yes... Ginny, what's... oh my God... yes... okay. I'm coming."

Bonnie ended the call, looked at me, and said, "My sister's in the hospital."