“Is that what the other Orphans are taught?” Evan asks.
Jack twirls linguine on his fork, regards the bulb of pasta, sets it down. He glances over at the picture of his wife on the mantel, the one at some exotic black-sand beach where she’s knee-deep in surf, laughing, her wet sundress clinging to her thighs. Jack wipes his mouth. “No.”
It is a confession of sorts.
“Why not?”
“It’s harder.” With the heel of his hand, Jack pushes his plate a few inches away. “There’s a Cherokee legend. An elder tells his grandson about the battle that rages inside every person.”
“The two wolves.”
“That’s right. One wolf is anger and fear and paranoia and cruelty. The other is kindness, humility, compassion, serenity. And the boy asks his grandfather, ‘Which wolf wins?’ You remember the answer?”
“‘The one you feed.’”
“That’s right. Our challenge?” Jack folds his cloth napkin, wipes a smudge of Alfredo from the edge of his plate. Then he looks directly into Evan’s eyes. “Feed both.”
A furious rapping on the front door broke Evan from his meditation. By the time he registered a return to the present tense, he was on his feet on the Turkish rug, pistol in hand, staring down the locked door across from him and whoever waited behind it.
17
Broken Pieces
The angry banging on the door resumed, echoing around the hard surfaces and off the high ceiling. Eight noiseless strides took him to the side of the jamb. He’d filled in the peephole, as peepholes provided scant protection from bullets and awls, but he’d installed a pinhole camera outside in the corridor, using an air-conditioning vent as a concealment host. With a knuckle he nudged aside a hanging silk tapestry of a Thai Buddha on his wall, revealing an inset security monitor.
He took in the high-resolution image. A T-shirt stretched tight across a feminine form. A mass of wild, wavy hair. One fist, the fist not currently engaged in the knocking, placed on an angrily cocked hip.
Mia Hall, 12B.
Releasing a breath, Evan dropped the Wilson Combat pistol into the pocket of an overcoat hung on a brushed-nickel wall peg and reached for the knob.
Before the door was fully open, Mia started in. “‘Take out a knee?’ Really?”
Evan said, “Uh-oh.”
“‘Uh-oh’ is right. ‘Uh-oh’ as in: I spent this afternoon not in court but in the principal’s office at Roscomare Elementary.” She crossed her arms, a parental bearing of admirable effectiveness. “You really informed him that that’s how to handle a bully?”
“I was kidding.”
“He’s eight. He looks up to you. You need to come tell him that violence is not the way we solve problems.”
Her expression made clear that this was not a request.
Behind the partially opened door, the matte black handle of the pistol protruded slightly from the pocket of the overcoat. Evan tapped it in all the way and stepped out, meekly following Mia down the hall.
One of Peter’s eyes peered earnestly up at Evan, the other hidden beneath a pack of frozen peas. He reclined against a clutch of pillows in a bed shaped like a race car, strewn with mismatched Harry Potter sheets. A fray of hair stuck out at an odd angle, still growing in from the pirate-eye-patch/duct-tape mishap. Evan and Mia stood over him as if administering last rites.
Peter lowered the peas, revealing a swollen eye dappled with broken blood vessels. It looked impressive but was not a significant injury. Nonetheless, Mia gasped.
Peter smiled at Evan, flashing a prominent front tooth. “‘Next time,’ right?”
“No,” Mia said. “Not next time. This is not what we do, Peter. Next time you’re gonna make a better choice that doesn’t land you — and me—in Mrs. DiMarco’s office. Tell him please, Evan.”
The room smelled of Play-Doh, toothpaste, and bubblegum. A gold-foil seal of a grinning roadrunner shimmered on a homework folder on the floor: ROSCOMARE ROAD ELEMENTARY. A trio of balloons, each bearing the logo of a children’s shoe store, bumped along the ceiling. On the desk a Lego figure was undergoing some kind of primeval surgery, lying on a cot of tissues beside several Q-tips and a tube of superglue. A crayon drawing of the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys fluttered from a tack beneath the vent. Evan might as well have landed on a different planet.
He cleared his throat. “Fighting is bad,” he said.
Mia regarded him through a fall of hair, seemingly disappointed and encouraging at the same time. She gave him a prompting nod.
“A better means of conflict resolution,” Evan continued, “is to tell.”
Mia issued a noise of consternation that seemed to encompass her, Evan, the entire bedroom tableau.
The Jaws theme sounded. Mia lifted her iPhone from her pocket and stiffened. “Sorry. I’m sorry. This is a big work problem. Can you just…?”
Evan nodded, and she stepped into the other room, answering. He noted that she left the door open. Peter stared at him expectantly. What the hell was Evan doing here? His thoughts drifted to Katrin, holed up in the motel room waiting for sunrise and Evan’s return. Her father held hostage at this very moment. Was he bound? Gagged? Had they beaten him?
Evan looked around the room for inspiration, found none. A family portrait sat framed on the desk, Peter a fat newborn, Mia with a dated haircut, her bespectacled husband wearing an easygoing grin. A Post-it adhered to the windowsill issued another directive from that Peterson guy: “Make at least one thing better every single place you go.”
Evan closed his eyes and thought back to being a kid. He pictured the way Jack’s lips flickered when he sussed out the situation beneath a situation, as if they were searching for words. Evan reached for the wobbly desk chair, swung it around, sat on it backward.
He took a breath. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know how you’re feeling about it, but I’m pissed off that a kid did that to you.”
Peter stared down at his hands, fingers fussing along the hem of the sheet.
Evan said, “He probably came after you and you tried to defend yourself and got popped in the face. That’s unfair, and it sucks.”
Peter kept his eyes lowered. “I wish I could stick up for myself,” he finally said, his voice on the edge of cracking.
“You can,” Evan said. “You’re just not big enough to do it with your fists. So why don’t you use your smarts, keep clear of this kid, stay in eyeshot of a teacher? Nothing wrong with working the situation. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“And if that fails? You can always put drain cleaner in his water bottle.”
Peter grinned and offered a fist. Evan bumped it with his own as he headed out of the room.
The muted TV flickered over a landscape of scattered toys and dirty laundry spilled from a basket that had been dropped haphazardly onto one of the couch’s split cushions. A dinner tray lay where it had slid off the couch, littered with pieces of a broken plate and bowl.
Mia, nowhere in sight.
Evan walked down the hall, calling her name quietly. The door to the master was ajar, but when he entered the room, he found it empty. From the dark maw of the walk-in closet, he heard sniffling.