His mother’s face tightened (or so it appeared to him). Rosemary fussed, on the verge of a full-throated cry, as his mother lowered her into her folding Pack-and-Play. I know how you feel, Brandon thought.

She walked to the door, stepping over two stacks of magazines. Through the lace curtain on the door, Brandon could see two silhouettes — which from his vantage point could also have been the shape of a single, grotesquely misshapen visitor. His stomach felt the way it felt, when he was nervous or apprehensive (which was in fact often), as if a knot was rebounding inside his gut while it was forming.

He knew, deep within the recesses of his brain where he generally feared to wander, that he had good reason to be nervous. He knew, despite his most ardent and well-rehearsed attempts at self-delusion, that when the front door opened, when his father and Helga crossed the threshold into their home, a point of no return would be under their feet. He knew, with growing sadness and fear, that he had set into motion something Huge, something that had already vastly exceeded his capacity for control.

He had done it. He had made the ultimate threat; the one threat that was credible, by virtue of its being entirely feasible. And as his mother walked, seemingly in slow-motion, to their front door, thoughts raced through his mind — did he do the right thing? What would actually happen?

He suddenly remembered an afternoon, that pivotal summer, at the Maine house. His aunt had joined him at the picnic table outside, where Brandon had set up what would be a fatal attempt to capture and carry home an assortment of live starfish and crabs in a makeshift seawater-filled container. His father, he had explained to his aunt, had offered to set up a salt-water aquarium for him. About which his aunt — remembering a tearful sister and years of broken promises — had been skeptical.

“So…what about your ‘tank’?”

The door opened. His father’s face was in his own version of Tough Guy mode; Helga’s, a largely expressionless mask in which her eyes nonetheless made brief, critical passes over the place Brandon had come to call home — over the worn linoleum tile in the hallway; over the shiny, scuffed walls, over the worn carpet and secondhand furniture.  There were cursory words of welcome; his father and Helga’s voices had the flat affect of politeness squeezed within an inch of its life. Brandon heard no actual words — in his ears, a rushing noise had begun, and whether imagined or real, rendered him isolated.