Only Child(49)

I could hear people talking in the hallway.

“A meeting?” Daddy said. “A meeting about what? And you said yes? To come here?”

I thought that Ricky’s mom would probably start to get mad about how Daddy was talking to her. She answered Daddy, and her voice didn’t sound so out of breath anymore. “Yes, Jim, I said yes. She wants to talk about…our options. If we can do something about Charles’s family to…hold them accountable. And I think she’s right about that. It has nothing to do with…”

“All right, guys, please come in, have a seat.” Mommy walked back in the living room, and Daddy took a couple steps back. Three women and one man came in behind Mommy and sat down on the couch and chairs. “Do you all know each other?”

Some said yes and some said no, so Mommy said the names of everyone: “Nancy Brooks, Ricky’s mom; Janice and Dave Eaton, Juliette’s parents; Farrah Sanchez, Nico’s mom; and Laura LaConte, Jessica’s mom.” Juliette, Nico, Jessica—they’re all kids from Andy’s class that got shot from the gunman, too. I saw their pictures on the news on TV.

“And that’s my husband, Jim, and Zach, my other son.” Mommy pointed at me and Daddy. Daddy didn’t say anything, and he didn’t do handshakes.

“Can I get you anything? To drink?” Mommy asked, and then she went in the kitchen because some of the people said water, please. The room got very quiet after she left. I saw Ricky’s mom staring at Daddy. Her face looked very sad. Mommy came back with a tray with glasses of water on it, and she put it down on the coffee table. “All right, I think we can get started,” she said. “Jim, could you…?” and she pointed at me with her head.

Daddy stared at Mommy for a second and then he said, “Come on, Zach, let’s go.”

I wanted to stay to hear what Mommy and the other people were going to talk about in their meeting, but Daddy said, “Come on. Please, Zach,” in the voice that he does when you better listen. I got up and walked out of the living room behind Daddy. “Let me grab you a sweater from upstairs. It got cold out,” Daddy said, and walked upstairs. “Put your shoes on.”

I sat down right outside the living room to put my shoes on so I could still hear the talking inside.

“…We could go over the information we do have…and also what we don’t have. More importantly maybe,” I heard Mommy say, “I wanted to confirm we’re all on the same page. Everyone in this room does want to pursue this…take action, right?”

“Yes,” and “I think so, yes,” the other people said.

“OK, good. I thought it would be good to get together and compare notes and figure out how we will proceed against them, the Ranalezes. I think it begins with us speaking out publicly, giving more interviews like the one I did with Wanda Jackson. And we should start looking into ways to take action against them, legally….”

“Zach, that’s not for you in there!” Daddy stood next to me all of a sudden and busted me spying.

Daddy drove out of the driveway fast, and the Audi made a loud sound when Daddy started speeding up our road. After we turned the corner, he drove slower and looked at me in the mirror. “Two stops: the dry cleaner’s and the liquor store right next to it,” he said to me. “It’s almost lunchtime. What do you say we go to the diner after?”

When we got to the parking lot at the diner, there were still some snowflakes in the air. I tried to catch them on my hand, but they melted right when they touched my skin. Inside the diner we sat down in a booth, and that’s my favorite spot because you can watch the gas station across the street. It’s a gas station where they also fix cars, and you can watch how they lift the cars up so they can fix them from underneath.

Marcus, the boss of the diner, came over to our table, and he knows us because we come here a lot of times for breakfast on the weekends, but not for a long time now.

“Hi, Jim!” Marcus said to Daddy (it sounds like “Jeeem” when he says Daddy’s name, and that sounds funny). To me he said, “Hi, Bob.” He knows that’s not really my name, but he says it as the same joke every time, and then he laughs loud about his own joke. But this time he just did a little smile, a sad smile.

“Jeeem, I’m very sorry about your son. Very, very sorry. All of us here,” and he waved his hand around the whole diner, and a lot of people were looking at us now. “Lunch is on me today, OK, Jeeem?” Marcus said, and did a pat on Daddy’s back.

“OK…that’s…thank you, that’s kind of you,” Daddy said, and he looked embarrassed a little and I was feeling embarrassed, too, with everyone looking at us.

We ordered the same thing: cheeseburgers and French fries and chocolate milkshakes. We can’t get that when Mommy is with us, but Daddy said, “Well, she’s not with us, is she? Milkshakes on the first day of snow are a must.”

We waited for the food and watched the workers at the gas station and the snowflakes flying all around. We didn’t talk a lot, and I liked sitting there like that. The food came, and the first thing I did was take a French fry and dip it in my milkshake. Daddy smiled.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“Why is Mommy having a meeting at our house? To talk about Charlie?”

Daddy was holding his cheeseburger and was about to take a bite, but then he put it back down on his plate and cleaned off his hands with a napkin. “It’s…Well, your mother is very sad about Andy, right? Everyone is. Her, me, you…”