Gene looked up at her son, and I watched her expect the thing she had always gotten from him: the apology, the smoothing-over, the Mom, she’s just tired, let’s not make a thing of it. Brandon gave her none of it.

He looked at his mother across the daughter she had labeled a guest, and he said, in a voice with no anger in it and no give either, “Open it, Mom.”

Chapter 14 — The Scream

Gene took the box.

She lifted the lid with the last of her composure still on her face, already assembling, I could see it, the little speech she meant to deliver — something about oversensitive children and modern parenting and people who can’t take a harmless joke.

She never gave the speech.