The Beginning of After

soon as I’m better. It shouldn’t be more than a few days.”
    “Okay. I’ll be around.” Another of our awkward pauses. “Get well soon.”
    “Thanks, Hallmark.”
    After we hung up, I went back to bed, staring at the City with Joe outfit I’d picked and laid out the night before: jeans, boots, black turtleneck sweater. And all I could think was, should I check my email now or wait until the clock hits nine?
    Screw it , I thought. I’ll go check email now.
    I tiptoed into the den, not wanting Nana to hear me and know what I was doing.
    But there was nothing in my in-box.
    The next two days passed slowly. I finished the rest of my applications—to NYU, Columbia, Cornell, and Smith—and submitted them with time to spare. Meg came back. We made one giant ice cream sundae at her house to celebrate her telling her dad that she thought he was an emotional shut-in with no idea how to love somebody, and she was glad she didn’t have to see him anymore.
    “It was the best silence on the other end of a phone call I’ve ever heard,” said Meg, licking chocolate syrup off her spoon.
    I let my spoon clink against hers in quiet solidarity as we dug for ice cream, and I knew she thought the fact that we were both dad-less, me for good and her for all intents and purposes for the time being, would bring us closer. I wasn’t planning to correct her. There would always be a difference in our losses.
    “I think I’m going to go back to the Palisades Oaks,” I said.
    “Why?” Meg frowned.
    “Nobody’s calling us, and I feel like I need to be there. If David doesn’t go see him, somebody else besides Etta should go.”
    “Laurel, you’re just the neighbors’ daughter. . . .”
    “Whose family he may have killed,” I added, and that shut her down. I reached out and put my hand on her spooning elbow. “I just want to talk to him.”
    Now if only I could convince Nana.
    When I got home, I was all prepared for the big talk, the arguments and the pleading. I was so focused on it that I almost didn’t notice the thing in the hallway until I tripped on it.
    A gigantic backpack.
    The kitchen smelled of spaghetti sauce cooking, but instead of following that smell, I tracked the sound of the TV from the den. It wasn’t like anything I’d heard in a long time.
    I stood in the doorway and saw the video game on the screen, listened to the whoop s and blip s and ding s of it. The gaming chair rocked a bit, with Masher lying along one side.
    I actually gulped, and then said, “Hi, David.”
    He swiveled Toby’s chair toward me and smiled a crooked smile. He’d gotten a haircut.
    “Hey, stranger.”

Chapter Thirty-six

    H alfway across the Tappan Zee Bridge, I looked out onto the Hudson River and saw a single boat, putt-putting away from a dock with a trail of frothy water behind it. A fishing boat, maybe. And I thought about how I’d love to be on that boat, even if it was wickedly cold and my eyes watered from the wind. To be on that boat, instead of here in the Volvo with Nana driving two miles an hour and David in the backseat, quiet and grumpy.
    “It’s such a clear day,” said Nana, her eyes locked onto the curve of the bridge as it unrolled ahead of us. She was saying these kinds of things (“Traffic is nice and light,” and “This is my favorite radio station”) to fill the silence. She didn’t seem to understand that silence was the only normal thing about our drive to the Palisades Oaks. I needed all the normal I could get at the moment.
    “Yeah, you can almost see down to Manhattan,” I said anyway, then glanced in the side-view mirror, where I could see David’s face pressed against the window behind me. His eyes were closed and he was wearing earphones, and I thought of how I’d woken up early that morning and tiptoed into the den to check on him. To make sure he was still there. And then to watch him sleep for a minute, wondering where he’d been and how he’d gotten to us. He hadn’t said and we hadn’t asked.
    David didn’t seem excited to see his father. He appeared mostly confused, and a little nervous. And just really, really tired, like he hadn’t gotten a good night’s rest in weeks. Although he clearly had no trouble on our couch, or now, in the backseat of our car. I got the sense that if we hadn’t decided to drive him to New Jersey ourselves, he would have stayed in the den, sleeping and playing video games and wrestling with Masher, and never going to see his