"What do you mean, Brad?" Alan said. "What else should we have done? How can you have any doubts?" "I don't," Brad said. "It's okay." Alan looked down at his hands, which appeared to belong to someone else: white lumps of dough clenched into hard fists, knuckles white. He made himself unclench them. "No, it's *not* okay. Tell me about this. You remember what he was like. What he...did." "I remember it," Bryan said. "Of course I remember it." He was staring through the table now, the look he got when he was contemplating a future the rest of them couldn't see. "But." Alan waited. He was trembling inside. He'd done the right thing. He'd saved his family. He knew that. But for six years, he'd found himself turning in his memory to the little boy on the ground, holding the loops of intestine in through slippery red fingers. For six years, whenever he'd been somewhere quiet long enough that his own inner voices fell still, he'd remember the hair in his fist, the knife's thirsty draught as it drew forth the hot splash of blood from Davey's throat. He'd remembered the ragged fissure that opened down Clarence's length and the way that Davey fell down it, so light and desiccated he was almost weightless. "If you remember it, then you know I did the right thing. I did the only thing." "*We* did the only thing," Brian said, and covered Alan's hand with his. Alan nodded and stared at his cheeseburger. "You'd better go catch up with your friends," he said. "I love you, Adam," he said. "I love you, too." Billy crossed the room, nodding to the people who greeted him from every table, geeks and jocks and band and all the meaningless tribes of the high school universe. The cute redhead sprinkled a wiggle-finger wave at him, and he nodded at her, the tips of his ears going pink. # The snow stopped by three p.m., and the sun came out and melted it away, so that by the time the game started at five-thirty, its only remnant was the soggy ground around the bleachers with the new grass growing out of the ragged brown memory of last summer's lawn. Alan took the little ones for dinner at the diner after school, letting them order double chocolate-chip pancakes. At 13, they'd settled into a fatness that made him think of a foam-rubber toy, the rolls and dimples at their wrists and elbows and knees like the seams on a doll. "You're starting high school next year?" Alan said, as they were pouring syrup on their second helping. He was startled by this -- how had they gotten so old so quickly? "Uh-huh," Eli said. "I guess." "So you're graduating from elementary school this spring?" "Yeah." Eli grinned a chocolate smile at him. "It's no big deal. There's a party, though." "Where?" "At some kid's house." "It's okay," Alan said. "We can celebrate at home. Don't let them get to you." "We can't go?" Ed suddenly looked a little panicked. "You're invited?" He blurted it out and then wished he hadn't.