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at this point. I can see the ghost of the conversation stretching out into the future, all the old insults and accusations. Instead, I try to pretend this isn’t about us. I reset, rewind, take it from the top. I say, “Our son’s best friend does this Nazi thing and you’re not even curious?”
    “See, that’s an excellent word to describe it –
Nazi
,” Liam says. “Because it captures the two essential elements of the act. First, it’s sick. It’s fucking nasty.” He stands up, rests the heels of his hands on the edge of his desk, and leans forward, like he needsto stretch his back. “Second, I don’t get it. You don’t get it. But the thing is, that’s fine, that’s all right, because we’re not supposed to get it. If we could get inside that kind of thinking and understand where it comes from, we’d be Nazis too. It’s inherently incomprehensible to the person of average, I mean not even above-average, average, or even slightly below-average morality. So no, I’m not curious. Plus, I’ve already told you what I thought of Jason. Something not right there all along, I mean, we’ve had this discussion, right? But the key is, whatever it is, it’s inaccessible to me. I was thinking about this last night,” he confesses.
    “So you
were
thinking about it.”
    “I analyzed it. I didn’t torture myself.”
    “Well, words.” I wave them off. “I
analyzed
it too, okay? Did you notice how much older than us the Parmenters were?”
    Liam shrugs.
    “And Jason is an only child?”
    He looks out the window. He does bored.
    “I’ll bet there’s some stuff there if you scratch the surface, abuse or serious unhappiness at a minimum. Mrs. Parmenter, remember how she looked so fragile? Remember how Ty said she went to bed so early? I wonder if she works. I’ll bet you anything it all comes back to her.”
    “As I keep saying, I have no desire to scratch the surface. I lust for coffee and peanuts.”
    “Ew.”
    “Yep.” He rubs his hands together with relish. “Ty up?”
    “I think.” He follows me out to the kitchen. Ty’s breakfast is still sitting there; above our heads we can hear the shower rain. “We haven’t really told him what to expect.”
    “Do we know what to expect?”
    I J-cloth some clean counters, thinking. “Some discomfort,” I say finally.
    Liam’s already deep into yesterday’s newspaper.
    I pour him coffee, make myself decaffeinated black tea. It’s my day off. After a few minutes Ty comes down in jeans and last year’s Vancouver International Film Festival T-shirt. Bare feet, damp head. Hesitating: “I had a shower.”
    Liam turns a page without looking up. “Magic.”
    Still, the tea is helping. I watch him sit opposite his father and start to eat, our cub. The cereal spoon looks too big for his mouth. He’s a young fourteen, thin and smart and good, so far sneaking under the radar of the girls at school, but not for much longer, I suspect. He’s started talking about basketball tryouts. He’s started talking about coming running with me, and the cross-country team, and clothes. He’s coming into his father’s height and looks; another year and he’ll slay them. An error of judgment is all you can accuse him of here, and it won’t stick. This little thing won’t show on his resume.
    “They’re here.” I watch out the window as the cruiser pulls up the middle of the driveway and stops, blocking both sides of the garage. I wait to see the cop from two weeks ago get out, the prick with the moustache and sunglasses, but nothing happens. I tell Ty to run upstairs and put some socks on. I tell Liam, “You should have shaved.”
    “It’s fine,” he says. “We’re all fine.”
    The doorbell rings. “Should we act surprised?”
    Liam says no. “We’re not guilty.”
    “Do we say we’ve talked to a lawyer already?”
    “No. If we get a lawyer, it isn’t going to be Isobel, so talking to her doesn’t count.”
    “But maybe we should ask to have a