What Happened to the Bennetts(4)

“I know.” Troy was Allison’s boyfriend of two months, already lasting longer than her last boyfriend. I liked Troy because he was as smart as she was, a true scholar athlete. He was on the quiet side, but I learned from having Ethan that there’s more to introverts than meets the eye. My son had a circle of friends, but needed time to himself.

“I got her a hair appointment the same day as the dance. They all want to get in the morning of, but they don’t want to miss the game. It was impossible, but I got her in.” Lucinda’s voice carried an unmistakable note of mom pride.

“Way to go.”

“She wants beachy waves.”

Beachy waves. I’d been hearing that a lot. I knew it was a thing. Allison had beautiful hair, but she thought it didn’t have enough volume.

Dad, I hate my hair, it’s so flat.

Like your butt?

Lucinda was saying, “Do you think they’ll tell us something soon?”

“Yes, as soon as they can. They know what they’re doing.”

“Right, they do. It’s a good hospital.”

“It is.” I squeezed her hand. We had often discussed the relative merits of Paoli Hospital, routinely rated among the top in the Philadelphia area. Lucinda had researched the hospitals before we moved here, and she became an expert on them and schools, comparing what the districts spent on instructional costs versus the state and national medians. My wife did the homework; we had that in common. Her mother had been the same way and her father had been a CEO of PennValue, a big insurance brokerage in Allentown. My father used to say she came from money, as if it were an actual place. Moneytown.

“Dad, do you think Moonie’s okay?” Ethan looked over, his eyes pained. They were blue, a shade lighter than Allison’s. I was the only brown-eyed one in the family. Well, me and Moonie.

“Yes,” I told him. We had left the dog in the police cruiser, since the Mercedes was being impounded by the police.

“Don’t be mad at him.” Ethan hung his head, showing a gelled whorl of light brown hair, combed from a low side part. I supposed the style started with Justin Bieber, but Lucinda and I both hoped it would end soon.

“I’m not. Why would I be?”

“I thought you would say it was his fault, but it wasn’t.”

“No, it wasn’t.” I managed a smile to reassure him, but Ethan didn’t smile back. His face was rounder than Allison’s, his eyes were narrower set and his build skinnier. I tended to define him in relationship to his sister, which I knew wasn’t a good thing, but as an only child, I found their differences fascinating. His skin tone was lighter, too. He had a sprinkling of small freckles on his upturned nose, since he got my thin Irish skin.

Ethan’s face fell. “It was my fault.”

Lucinda reached for his hand. “Ethan, no, it wasn’t. Why would you say such a thing?”

“I should’ve held him tighter. If I had, Allison would be fine. I shouldn’t have let him jump out.”

Lucinda’s gaze met mine, her expression agonized. We both knew our son could not bear this burden. He was the more sensitive of the two, carrying his hurts around like a backpack. Meanwhile he began looking down at his hands, where blood had dried within the lines in his palm.

“Ethan, listen.” I squeezed his shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”

“Why not?” Ethan’s troubled gaze lifted to me, and his lip caught on his braces, like it did when his mouth went dry. I knew he wanted an answer, since he was the kind of kid who needed to be reasoned with, not just told.

Because I said so, my father would have said, but that didn’t work with my son.

“Ethan, you’re saying Allison would be fine, but for your letting go of Moonie, right? But that’s bad reasoning. Your letting go of Moonie is just the but-for cause.” I was dredging up first-year torts class, from before I dropped out. “There’s a bunch of other but-fors, and none of them is the real cause.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, think about it. How about, ‘Allison would be fine, but for the fact that we won the game’? Or ‘Allison would be fine, but for the fact we stayed late to celebrate’? Or ‘Allison would be fine, but for the fact we have a new Mercedes’?” I spotted Lucinda wince, so I moved on. “But-for is the same trap as what-if. You drive yourself crazy with possibilities. There’s only one cause, and it’s the carjackers. They did it. It’s their fault.”

“But Moonie—”

“Not Moonie, not you. Them.” My face went hot. I suddenly felt like I was raging inside, my emotions all over the lot. “The two of them, they’re scum. Violent, stupid, evil men. They aren’t worth one hair on your sister’s head. They’re the ones at fault, and I want them to rot in jail. I want them to suffer every damn day of their miserable lives and—”

“The one’s already dead, Dad.”

Lucinda’s eyes flared. “Honey, we were talking about Ethan.”

“I am talking about Ethan. I don’t want Ethan to blame himself for what that scum did to Allison.”

Ethan looked down. “I get it, Dad.”

Lucinda looked shaky. “Your dad’s just upset, is all.”

I turned away, trying to calm down. I wished I knew how Allison was doing in surgery. I loved that child to the marrow. She was everything I could’ve asked for in a daughter. Strong, smart, funny, bold. More blunt than tactful. More sensitive than she looked. My father always said she was like a draft horse, that way. Big and strong, but not always rough and tumble. Growing up, we had a great brown draft, named Chocolate Soldier.