“Tommy! Do you hear this insolent trash? Hit her! I am ordering you to hit her right now! You didn’t beat her hard enough yesterday!”

Tom was plastered against the hallway wall, looking like a man facing a firing squad. He opened his mouth. His hand went instinctively to his lower spine.

“Hit her!” Christine shrieked, slapping the coffee table.

“Mom… I can’t,” Tom whimpered, tears of humiliation pooling. “I can’t handle her.”

Christine’s mouth hung open. “What do you mean, you can’t handle her?”

“It means,” I said, walking to the hallway console and retrieving a sleek plastic binder, “that your son brought a knife to a gunfight.”