Teaser. Burt Weissbourd

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      “The guy couldn’t hear me. Picture this alien saying, ‘I’m here to eat your children’ and Toby keeps saying, ‘Welcome to Olympic’,” Corey said, still angry. “And what does it mean when he says ‘over-protectiveness can easily become stifling’?”

      Abe was sitting, watching her pace in front of their fireplace. Abe scratched the back of his head, looking glum. “He said that?” he finally asked.

      “Just before he asked if I’d thought about,” she raised a forefinger and middle finger from each hand above her head, scrunching them to mimic quotation marks, “‘talking to someone.’”

      “Did you provoke him?”

      “What kind of a dumb-ass question is that?”

      Abe grinned. “Sorry.”

      “He didn’t like what I had to say. But what difference does that make? It was true.”

      Abe rubbed the top of his ear with his thumb. “You had to say something. Aaron’s his son.”

      “He was so full of himself. So sure he knew everything. He thinks I’m paranoid. Is that what I am?” she asked, looking at him, suddenly anxious.

      He looked up at her. “No, you’re nothing like that.”

      “Okay. Thank you,” she said, then Corey turned to watch the fire.

      Abe stood, aware she was still upset. He made a grumbling noise.

      Corey looked back at Abe over her shoulder. “I almost hit him.”

      “Cor, he’s Billy’s dean…” Abe barely suppressed another grin. One time she’d hit Billy’s baseball coach. Billy had just turned eight. She came late for a game and he wasn’t playing. She finally found him stuck way up a tree, crying because he couldn’t get down. The coach had sent Billy up there for missing a fly ball, told him to play look out. Two grown men had to pull her off the guy. Abe loved that she’d done that.

      Will walked in. “Is this about me?”

      Abe said “Yes” and Corey said “No” at the same time.

      “Great. I saw you at school, mom.”

      “Parent conference.”

      “Oh…yeah. What’s up?”

      Corey hesitated. Abe turned to stoke the fire. This was between them.

      “Okay. Look, I talked with your advisor about Aaron and Maisie. I told him about Star. I had to. I’m worried about them.”

      “Jesus, mom. Are you crazy? I have a life you know.”

      “I made them promise to keep it—”

      “Them? There’s more than one?” Will asked, agitated.

      “Well, he called Toby in. We got into it.” She shrugged, no big deal, hoping to reassure him.

      Will just stared at her, then he stepped back, cracking his knuckles, one after another.

      “I had to, Will. I’m sorry if it makes things hard for you.” She watched him turn away.

      Will faced the fireplace. Finally he turned his head just enough to see her. “Just because you know every hard case on the street doesn’t mean that everyone on the street is like that.”

      “You’re right.” She tried to explain, “But you don’t take chances with your son and his friends.”

      He turned to face her. “Is that up to you? Why can’t you leave things alone? Why do you have to mess things up for me? You know I’m seventeen, and I do just fine without you. Okay? Okay?” Will slammed the door on his way out.

      Her shoulders sagged. She got a log to put on the fire.

      Abe watched her stew. Billy was right, he reflected, and so was she. There was a fine line between too fearful and streetwise. It was hard to find that line at Olympic, harder still to walk it. It was their job to help him do that anyway.

      She looked at him, leaning against the mantel, watching her. “So?” she eventually asked.

      He looked into their fire, then back at her. “I’d say he’ll be mad for about a day then carefully sort it out.” His brow furrowed until his eyebrows almost touched in a “V.” “He’ll get it, too, even if he doesn’t like it.”

      Corey poked at the fire, idly now. “Okay, my way of solving problems is maybe one-of-a-kind and hard for a teenager to understand. I get that. But I’m trying to get this right.”

      He stepped beside her, close. “You are getting it right.”