Chapter 3: We Need to Talk
My husband put his phone in his pocket.
He didn't look at me.
He looked at Ethan.
"Tonight," he said.
"After dinner.
You and me."
That was it.
He didn't explain.
He didn't raise his voice.
He just turned and started walking toward the restaurant we'd booked, and after a moment the rest of us followed.
Dinner was quiet in the way that loud things sometimes go quiet.
My sister-in-law, Donna, kept the conversation moving — the food, the view, a story about her neighbor's dog.
She's good at that.
She always has been.
I watched her work the table and felt grateful for her in a way I couldn't have put into words right then.
Ethan ate without looking up.
I ordered fish.
I don't remember what it tasted like.
At one point Ethan reached for the bread basket and my husband moved it without thinking, just slid it a few inches further down the table, and Ethan pulled his hand back.
It wasn't dramatic.
Nobody else would have noticed.
But I noticed.
After the plates were cleared, Donna touched my arm.
"Walk with me?"
We went down to the water while the two of them stayed at the table.
I could see them through the restaurant window from the promenade — my husband leaning forward, Ethan with his arms crossed, then not crossed.
"How long has that been going on?" Donna asked.
"What?"
"Ethan.
The way he looks at you sometimes."
I watched a wave come in and pull back.
"I don't know.
A while, maybe.
I thought it was just teenage stuff."
"It's not teenage stuff," she said.
Not unkindly.
Just plainly.
"No," I said.
"I know."
She didn't say anything else for a minute.
We stood there while the light finished going out of the sky.
"He gets it from somewhere," she said finally.
I turned to look at her.
"I'm not saying anything I can prove," she said.
"I'm just saying — boys that age don't come up with that on their own.
Someone taught him that a woman's body is something to be embarrassed about."
The word landed somewhere low in my chest.
"Who?" I said.
She looked at me steadily.
"You know his friends better than I do."
I thought about that.
I thought about the group of boys Ethan had started spending most of his time with in the past year.
The way he'd started coming home from school with new phrases, new opinions, a new way of rolling his eyes at things he used to think were fine.
"There's a kid," I said slowly.
"Tyler.
He started at Ethan's school in September."
"What's he like?"
"I've only met him once.
He was polite enough to my face." I paused.
"But there was something about the way he looked around our house.
Like he was assessing it."
Donna nodded like I'd confirmed something she already suspected.
We walked back to the restaurant.
Through the window I could see that Ethan's arms were no longer crossed.
He was talking now — actually talking — and my husband was listening with his elbows on the table, completely still.
When we got back to the table, both of them looked up.
"Ready?" my husband said.
He was asking me.
Not Ethan.
Me.
I looked at my son.
His eyes were red at the edges.
Not from crying — not quite — but close.
"Ready," I said.
We walked back to the hotel together, the four of us.
Ethan fell into step beside me without being told.
He didn't say anything.
But halfway up the hill he reached out and took my bag off my shoulder and carried it the rest of the way.
I didn't make a thing of it.
I just let him.
Back at the hotel, Donna said goodnight and went to her room.
My husband touched my hand in the hallway — just briefly, just his fingers over mine — and then he looked at Ethan.
"Go on," he said.
Ethan turned to me.
He looked younger than he had all week.
Younger than he'd looked in months, maybe.
May you like
"Mom," he said.
"I need to tell you something about Tyler."
