My husband’s face went scarlet, and he stepped back, and I took my son’s hand, and we walked out of that country club with my mother and father, and left the Vances to their party.

Chapter 9 — The Car

In the back seat of my parents’ car, on the dark drive away from the country club, the composure my son had held together all night finally came apart, and he began to shake, and then to cry — great heaving sobs, the kind a child cries when something too big has happened to a body too small to hold it.

“I didn’t want them to kick you out,” he sobbed into my shoulder.