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  Gage’s blanky.

  Stella let out a low, strangled sob and pressed the soft blanket to her face. Shoulders shaking, she wept broken glass and razor blades. She sank to the floor and rocked with it against her for a long time.

  She hadn’t seen this blanket in...years. Long, long years. The last time she could remember seeing it, it had been in Gage’s bed beneath his pillow where he kept it even though he’d outgrown the need to take it with him everywhere long before.

  Months ago, she’d found a soft stuffed baby that used to be a favorite toy of Gage’s in Tristan’s bed. She’d pushed aside her discomfort at the time, but this...this... It meant that Tristan was repeatedly going into Gage’s room. The room that had been closed since she’d lost him, her brilliant boy, her firstborn. Tristan was going into Gage’s room and touching things. Taking them. How many things had he stolen?

  Stella tossed the mattress, dumped the drawers, dug into the back of Tristan’s closet to pull out crates and boxes of old school papers and keepsakes. She texted him every five minutes, getting no reply, until finally she stopped in the middle of the chaos. Panting, weeping, she gathered up all of Gage’s things—his blanky, his baby, the small clothes. The photos. She took them all from Tristan’s room and stood in front of Gage’s closed door, but could not make herself open it.

  Grief swelled and tore at her, making her shake.

  Stella pressed her forehead to the painted wood. She put her hand on the knob but didn’t turn it.

  Earlier she’d given herself a pep talk to convince herself that not only did she have the right to search her son’s room, but she had the responsibility to do it. Now there was nothing she could do to make herself open the door. It had been closed for too long. She couldn’t bring herself to go inside and see how everything had been left unchanged, minus the things Tristan had taken. Everything but their entire lives.

  She took Gage’s things and put them in an empty cardboard boot box she pulled from the top rack of her closet. A noise in the hall outside drew her attention; on unsteady feet and with swollen eyes, she opened her bedroom door to find Tristan standing in the hall, staring into his room.

  His face, pale but for two bright red spots on his cheeks, swung toward her.

  “What the hell did you do?” he cried.

  Mandy paused on the stairs, not daring to come up any higher. Tristan backed away from his mother, shaking his head. Stella came out of her bedroom, aware too late that she needed the support of the doorframe to keep her from stumbling.

  “Your room was a mess,” she told him. “And you didn’t call me like I told you to! I texted and texted you! You’re in big trouble, young man!”

  Too late, she noticed the other couple of kids behind Mandy, all of them giving each other guilty-eyed glances. Tristan gave her a look of such horror, such disgust, that Stella had to back up a step.

  “You’re...drunk,” Tristan said. “I didn’t text you because you said we could come back here, so that’s what we were doing.... But I’m out of here! You trashed my room! You trashed my stuff! What were you doing in my room, Mom?”

  “Looking for cigarettes!” she cried, triumphant at the instant look of guilt and chagrin on his face. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice that you stole mine from the dresser?”

  Tristan looked so blank-faced for a moment that she was sure she’d been wrong. Then his expression twisted. Full of disdain.

  “I stole those, like, forever ago.” He looked so much like Jeff right now that it kind of made her want to puke.

  Stella looked past him, to his shuffling, embarrassed friends. She was drunk, she realized. The floor beneath her was tipping, tilting, and she reached for the doorframe to steady herself.

  “Your friends should go home now, Tristan. We have some things we need to talk about.”

  Shaking his head, he backed away from her. Down the stairs. “I’m outta here.”

  “What? Wait a minute—”

  But he was already at the bottom of the stairs, and though Stella would’ve said that there was no way a single one of those teenagers could’ve moved without footsteps of thunder, the four of them were almost completely silent as they left.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Dad’s,” Tristan shot back, voice already faint and distant and disappearing.

  The front door slammed shut. Stella sank onto the top step and put her face in her hands. She ought to have stopped him. Right? Gone after him? But she’d been unable to make herself. Let Jeff deal with him, she thought, swallowing convulsively. Let his father handle it for a while.

  She needed to lie down. Or take a shower. Her stomach was churning. She could see Gage’s closed door from where she sat. She could see it when she closed her eyes.

  How long had Tristan been going inside, helping himself to his brother’s things? And what should she do about it? Stella shuddered, suddenly chilled.

  She forced herself to her feet, swaying, nearly taking a tumble down the stairs before she caught herself on the railing. In her bedroom, she looked at the spatter of wine on the bedspread and thought about pulling it off to put in the wash before the stain could set, but the best she could manage was to pull it to the foot of the bed, where it stuck from being tucked beneath the mattress.

  Stella sank, sank, sitting with her back to the edge of the bed and her knees pulled up. She pulled out her phone, opened the Kik app. Typed. Matthew. I need you.

  D, D, D... Minutes passed while Stella let her head fall onto her knees. Tears burned and choked her. When she looked again after ten or so minutes had passed, the D had become an R, but Matthew had not replied.

  She dialed his number this time. She listened to it ring, twice, then got his voice mail, which meant that he hadn’t missed the call. That would’ve taken at least six rings. No, he’d sent it directly to voice mail. On purpose.

  “Matthew, please call me. I’m having a really rough night. I had a fight with Tristan, and...” She drew in a breath. “I found out he’s been smoking, and he stole some things...from Gage’s room.”

  The weight of Gage’s name pushed her to silence after that. She breathed into the phone, eyes closed, knowing this wasn’t like the days when someone could hear a voice on an answering machine and choose to pick up a call they’d previously been ignoring. She could wait forever, and Matthew wasn’t going to pick up this call.

  “Please call me back,” she whispered. “I hope Louisa’s feeling better. I need to talk to you. Please.”

  Stella disconnected the call and put her phone in the alarm clock dock. She dragged herself to the shower, which she ran hot enough to scald. She lay on the shower floor with the water pounding all over her.

  Her grief rose and slaughtered her.

  And when the shower ran cold, she let the needle-prick of the frigid water abuse her while she shivered and twitched, until finally her head cleared and she forced herself to get out. Wrapped in her thick robe, towel on her hair, Stella went to her bed. She pulled back the covers and got underneath them, still shuddering with cold. She looked at her phone, but there were no messages.

  Eventually, she slept.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Matthew didn’t call her back or even Kik her until four o’clock on Saturday. The Kik came through while Stella was busy folding all the sheets and towels she’d collected and washed from Tristan’s room, and at first, she didn’t even reach to pull her phone from the dock where it had been since the night before. She could see the alert message from where she stood on the other side of the bed, but even if she’d been unable, she knew it was from him—Matthew was the only one who ever Kik’d her.

  She’d woken earlier than normal for a Saturday in which she had no plans. Clearheaded, not hungover, but wide awake just the same. She’d spent the morning stripping her bed and Trista