That Justin might want to escape his life didn’t surprise Grace. She put the phone on the table. The kids downstairs pounded from one end of the apartment to the other, the TV blared. Always fighting. She went into the bathroom to confront herself and get ready. Justin needed her, Willa said. But that was something you said to people. Did he really need her? What would she do for him? He’d tried to kill himself somehow. It didn’t matter how. It was that he’d done it.

See? Willa said. See? Grace took that to mean See what you’ve done to him? But what had she done? They were in each other’s lives so little now. She’d felt a similar uselessness when he’d run away at seventeen, when he’d been hurt. She’d stood in the hospital room watching him. Not sleeping. Not awake. She hadn’t been able to stop him, to prevent it, and she couldn’t help him. What kind of parent were you if your children wouldn’t follow you?

When he was a baby, she’d suspected trouble. He cried in terror when his father held him. He wanted Grace, only Grace, all the time. He was her first, and she loved him and did what you were supposed to do. Gave away her sleep and her body. Some months into his life, his body stopped working. He became a little drum filled with gas and waste. He howled like a fox. She and Arthur spent hours walking around the house with him, driving him in the car. She cried with him and hated him. Little screwup! If he would only let her eat and sleep and shower.

He never did warm to his father. Arthur tried. She placed sleeping Justin onto his father’s growing beer belly, onto the bare skin, so that it would bond them. He resisted school too. One day, and she’d never forgotten this, Arthur had lugged him over his shoulder, out of the house, and put him on the bus. Justin had cried and cried because he didn’t want to go. The driver asked Arthur to take him off the bus. He was six years old. Back in the house, he collapsed on the couch and wailed. He became a problem for the teacher, who barely held back her disdain for him. Grace met with her and sensed rottenness inside the other woman as they discussed Justin, but Grace also understood the frustration. Why couldn’t he stop crying, adjust to school, make their lives easier?

In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth and combed her hair. She couldn’t afford to dye it anymore. The price kept rising, and with her bad shoulders, she was unable to do it herself. Willa promised to help, but never found the time. She worked long hours and when she visited, she wanted to relax, not fuss with hair dye. Her hair hadn’t turned that fashionable silver. It had gone iron-colored.

If Arthur were here, he would guide her. They would be in the car already, on the way to the hospital. If Arthur had lived, maybe things would have been a little different for her. Not for Justin, really. He would have done whatever he wanted; it was how he was born, something in his blood. He would still be Justin. He would still have gotten involved with that person. But maybe she wouldn’t have had to suffer him. Arthur would have taken some of it. Arthur would have helped her do what you were supposed to do. Run to places when your child was hurt. Here she was sitting on the couch, here was the remote in her hand and the news going.