Not one to back down from a challenge, Francine took a deep breath, arming herself with enough ammunition to fill her son's ego full of holes, but she hesitated. She thought a moment, keeping the tip of her tongue poised like a lash against the roof of her mouth, ready to crack at the slightest provocation. It seemed Jim was done. Maybe because he knew better.

How different he seemed to the boy who ran away. He had grown, stretching the skin over his bones like cellophane; his new height he carried with a sort of petulant shrug. From beneath the rim of his god-awful beanie slithered a scraggly mess of hair - a dragon in need of slaying, if ever there was one. Where once there had been a squeaky-clean optimist stood a petulant cynic. It wasn't the first time Francine wondered about the kind of company he'd kept in California: probably a bunch of outspoken hippies, if the reports were anything to go by, who went to demonstrations and didn't wash their hair. Suddenly, the thought of peeling off that beanie was met with a thrill of horror that put her back on task.

"There was... a rally. Do you remember?" The flicker of surprise was all the answer she required, "When your father heard what happened, he started to call your... Anna, was it? He called every Thursday night to check up on you."

The surprise became confusion. Jim was elsewhere, shocked, presumably, that something had evaded his all-seeing eye. After a moment, he muttered, "I delivered pizzas Thursday nights."

"He knew. You needed space. He figured it was important to you."

Betrayed by the slightest wisp of a grin, Jim said, "I guess puttin' an entire continent between us gave him that impression."

"Later, when things started to get really bad, he had his floozy keep tabs on you." Mindful of the signals she was broadcasting, Francine eased herself onto the untoppled sofa with feline grace, and leaned on her elbow. She gave a chuckle that concealed a knife's edge, "That one has a way of knowing things."

"Yeah, Aimee said she knew all about us," Jim sounded far too intrigued for her liking. Suddenly, her hand was missing a glass. Her son righted the other sofa and sprawled himself across it, topless and bare-footed like some kind of hobo, "I've no idea how she does it."

"Well, here's something else you don't know," she said, spitting ice shards, "The morning the news broke about those riots, your father took the first flight out to Los Angeles. But when he got there-"

"We had already left," Jim sounded eerily subdued. It had not escaped Francine's attention that he had elected to stick to his brand of forced normality. That was Joe's stubborn pride he had inherited. In the beginning, every single tic had been a nail in the coffin of a promising career in business, that had always been the plan for their son. As it turned out, Jim had other plans. In the lonely silences between words, she found herself missing his little outbursts and whistles and clicks. Evermore, she knew she would spend her time watching him, waiting for the next explosive relapse.

"It wasn't until he spoke to Anna that we even knew you were alive. I tell ya, Jimmy, that changed him. And, despite our differences, I can't fault him for wanting to look out for his son."

In the telling silence, Francine watched Jim, a knot of guilt twisting in her stomach. What he didn't know couldn't hurt him, the old refrain, uttered countless times behind closed doors - if only it were true. His reverie was broken with a frown, "If you thought there was a chance I was dead, why didn't you fly out with Dad?"

"Oh, sweetie," she said, sadly, "I was on a spiritual retreat in Haines Falls, and you know how those Buddhists hate cell phones."