It wasn’t possible. She was just feeling wedding jitters, and underneath that, a fizz of excitement. Excitement that her life was about to change into all she’d anticipated it would be. In fact, no, more than that, excitement that it was going to be better than she’d ever imagined.

Chapter 5

Horrible idea had begun to form in Sylvie’s mind. It was a torturous idea, an enticing idea. Yesterday her fellow board members had mentioned where the boy had lived. They’d dangled it out there, a worm on a fishing line. She knew where that apartment complex was—everyone knew where it was, even though they pretended places like that didn’t exist. She could remain anonymous and just go and see.

No, she told herself, as though she was a bad dog. No. She tried to garden, to do a crossword puzzle. She read the first few pages of her grandfather’s copy of The House of Mirth, one of his favorite guiltypleasure books. He wrote notes in the margins, chicken-scratched nonsense she could barely decipher. She went into James’s office and stared at the filing cabinet. It was so infuriatingly unchanged. She looked again at the blank spot on the bookcase where the jewelry box had been. She turned her diamond ring around and around her finger.

To stave off the idea, she called Hector, the lawyer who had handled James’s will. She described the situation at the school to him in dainty, unworried tones. Just if you have a couple minutes to chat. In case you have an opinion. Hector passed her to another lawyer, one who “handled cases like this.” Sylvie wanted to ask what he meant by that, but he quickly added, “I just handle tax law and estate planning, Mrs. Bates-McAllister.”

The second lawyer’s name was Ace. He sounded about nineteen years old. Uncomfortably, Sylvie explained what she knew all over again—that Scott had coached this boy, that there was a rumor floating around that the coaches might’ve been negligent or even encouraged the hazing. “Though I can’t imagine how,” she added. “Certainly the coaches wouldn’t be stupid enough to whisper terrible things into boys’ ears just to see if they’d do them. Boys look up to their coaches, sometimes even more than their parents.”

But then she looked down at her hands. She’d picked the skin on the side of her thumb clean off. Scott hadn’t used his power as a coach to turn these boys into monsters. Scott hadn’t put the hazing ideas into their malleable heads. She refused to believe it.

Ace the lawyer let out a long sigh and waited almost ten whole seconds before speaking again. “Well, if his parents choose to fault the school for negligence, your son might be called to answer questions since he works for the school. It seems like a hard thing to prove, unless, of course, one of the other boys confirms the rumor. If they discover evidence, they may be able to build a case against your son?that his influence led to this happening, that sort of thing.”

“There’s no evidence,” Sylvie said quickly. “Someone’s making this all up.”

Ace cleared his throat. “The boy that died … he was on scholarship, right?”

“Yes.”

“And Hector mentioned you’re the chairman of the school’s board of directors.”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I’ve been on the board for years.” “And Scott still lives at home. I understand both your grandfathers left quite the estates when they died. I’m so sorry about your husband, too, by the way.”

She sniffed out a thank you. Then, “Where are you going with this?”

“Well, when some people lose a loved one, they look for someone—or something—to blame,” Ace said. “Worse than that, they lose sight of what’s important. I’ve seen it more times than I want to admit. They just see dollar signs, especially if they think you’ll do anything to preserve your reputation.”

“I’m not asking these questions out of concern for money or for my reputation,” Sylvie spat. “I’ve called you because I don’t want my son to be implicated for something he had nothing to do with.”

“Come now, Mrs. Bates-McAllister,” Ace said softly. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to protect what’s yours.”

She bristled. What could some fresh-out-of-law-school upstart know about protecting what was hers? What could he possibly understand about reputation? He certainly spoke like he was some kind of an authority, and what kind of name was Ace, anyway? It was a cruel affront that Hector had passed her to someone like this.

“Have you spoken to Scott directly about this?” Ace asked.

“No,” she said automatically.

“Maybe you should.”

Sylvie wanted to laugh. Talk to Scott? When was the last time she’d done that? She felt their relationship was cursed before they even met. Even before the paperwork was finalized for Scott’s adoption, Sylvie’s mother, Clara, had shaken her bony finger from her cancer deathbed and asked Sylvie why on earth she wanted another boy. You’ll never be a good mother to two boys, she scolded. You’re too delicate. You take everything too personally. And she’d propped herself up on the mattress and added, And he’s mixed race? She made a pinched, worried face. Are you trying to be political or something?

Politics were the furthest motivation from Sylvie’s mind when they got the news that a young mother from the Southwest who could no longer take care of an eighteen-month-old toddler had chosen Sylvie and James as new parents. Adopting an American child was far more difficult than Sylvie had imagined, and she and James had jumped through all kinds of hoops to even get this far; it seemed ungrateful to turn the child down. Still, when the adoption agency broke the news about Scott’s background, she felt a push and pull inside of her. It didn’t matter; it did matter. There would be a whole separate culture to consider, a world she knew little about. There would be talks they’d have to have, a painful explanation about the woman who’d given him up, a woman they knew nothing about. But maybe that wouldn’t matter. Couldn’t they just raise him as theirs? Couldn’t their culture be his culture?

You’re doing a wonderful thing, you know, the adoption coordinator mentioned during one of their private conversations, when James wasn’t around. Sylvie found the statement churlish and crass. Did the coordinator sense her uneasiness? Was it because she’d asked her if adoptive parents sent out some sort of I-just-brought-home-my-child announcements to friends, similar to a baby picture with weight and length and tiny footprints and handprints? Could the coordinator pinpoint the ambivalence that welled so deeply inside of her, the fear that she may never be able to bond with this child as she’d instantly bonded with her biological son?

James, of course, didn’t care one way or another. A baby is a baby, he’d said. He longed for another boy and didn’t care where he was from.

After a while, Sylvie warmed to the idea of having a second boy in the house. She imagined looking out her window and seeing her two sons hauling red sleds up the hill in the winter. It could be the image on her Christmas cards.

Sylvie meticulously planned how she would break the news to Charles, nearly four, that he was going to have a brand-new brother. It was going to involve an ice-cream cake, a trip to the zoo, and maybe a walk around the Swithin grounds. The day before the news, Charles arrived home from a play date, eager to show his parents an origami crane that his friend’s mother had taught him to make. When he proudly placed it in James’s hands, a perfect folded bird out of shiny pink paper, James frowned. “What are you, a fruit?”

Charles looked confused. “Like … a banana?”

James held the crane by its beak, scoffing at its pinkness. “This is gay, Charles.”

James had that obstinate, self-righteous look on his face again—it wasn’t an opinion, it was law. Charles’s face took on a worried, guilty, self-conscious expression that Sylvie would never get used to seeing. His gaze swiveled from James to Sylvie. “What does gay mean?” he asked worriedly, his eyes already filling with tears.

“It means happy,” Sylvie said quickly.

Charles looked relieved and James snorted. “Thank God we’re going to have another boy around here, Syl. Maybe he’ll teach this one not to act like such a pussy.”

Sylvie held her breath. Her son seemed to stop breathing. It was hard to know whether Charles understood the individual words, but he understood their thrust. He whirled around and ran out of the room.

Sylvie glared at James, who was busy pouring himself another drink. “What?” He raised his hands defensively. “What did I do?”

“I had plans for how I was going to tell him about the baby,” Sylvie said.

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“Because I told you!”

She ran out of the house and found Charles in the garden, sitting on a rock, sticking a twig into the dirt. She crouched down next to him and told him his father was just teasing him. But there was a surprise—Charles really was going to have a new brother. They were adopting a new little boy for him to play with, two years younger than him. They were picking him up and bringing him home next week. Charles would get to teach this little boy everything he knew.

“Now, he may look a little different than you,” she added. But it doesn’t mean he’s different inside. He’ll be your brother. A boy just like you.”

Charles nodded, not really understanding what she meant. After fiddling with his toes for a while, he raised his head. “What does ‘adopting’ mean?” he asked.

“Well, it means he’s coming from another family. But once we adopt him, he’ll belong to our family.”

Charles wrinkled his nose, confused. “Why?”

“Why what?” Sylvie cursed James for forcing this on her a day early. She felt unprepared for questions.

“Why can’t he stay with his own family?” Charles clarified.

Sylvie sat back. “Well, sometimes mommies can’t take care of their babies in the way they should be taken care of.”

Charles’s eyes widened. “Why?”

“Well, sometimes the mommy is … sick. Or too young. Or maybe poor.”

“Or bad?” He sounded thrilled.

“Well … yes. Maybe.”

Why had she said it? She should have said No, mothers are never bad, mothers are always good! But she was still so raw from what had just happened in the house. She couldn’t bear the thought that Charles might believe what James had just implied. What James often implied. That’s not the way you throw a baseball. Do it like this. Like this. It’s not like it’s hard. What are you thinking about, just sitting there? You’re daydreaming? Men don’t daydream, Charlie. That’s girly. And, Why do you need a night-light? Being afraid of the dark is for babies. She saw Charles’s face crumble every time James corrected him. She didn’t want Charles to ever think he was inferior, that he was anything less than perfect.

A look of intrigue sparkled through Charles’s eyes, and the idea took hold. The first few times she caught Charles stating matter-offactly that Scott’s real parents were poor poop-heads who’d given him up, she tried to correct him, but Charles would always look at Sylvie quizzically, she was the one who had told him this. And then James would cluck his tongue as if he understood that she had perpetuated it. Sometimes she felt like Scott knew she’d planted the idea, too. Even as a little boy, she’d noticed how he stared at her sometimes, his dark, round little eyes derisive, his pink mouth a flat line. Judging, seething. Sylvie thought Charles would eventually forget what she’d told him and accept Scott as his brother, but as the boys grew older, their relationship deteriorated. That Christmas card of them pulling sleds up the hill never came to fruition.