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into the examining room again. After putting the wastebasket back down, he put his hands on his hips and gazed around, as if checking to see if he had missed anything. And then, without any warning, he began to weep, a weeping made more violent by his efforts to contain the sounds of it. For several moments, the stocky man’s shoulders shook as sobs wrenched him. Finally, he dragged the sleeves of his shirt across his eyes. Then he removed the cushioning pillows. He checked them, too. He left the girl with the destroyed face on the floor, and carried the bat and pillows back into his house, turning off the office light and quietly closing the door behind him.
    Mitch waited until he thought he could stand up again.
    Barefoot and coatless, without even a sweater to pull over his T-shirt, and on nerveless legs that trembled as he moved, he emerged from the closet. He paused for a moment in the hallway and stared into the examining room, but he couldn’t bring himself to look down. Averting his eyes from the horror of it, he ran into the waiting room and then stumbled out into the snow. He could barely feel the cold. It was only when he inhaled sharp, painful air that he realized he had been holding his breath. As he shuffled down the driveway, he looked up at the windows in Abby’s room. There was no light up there. Mitch felt as if all the light had gone out everywhere.

    When the truck backed down the driveway and its headlights disappeared, when her father came trudging back up the stairs, when he had shut his bedroom door and a long time passed after that, Abby gave up waiting for Mitch to return to her bed that night. At least he hadn’t gotten caught, she was pretty sure, or else her father would have thrown open her door to read her the riot act. So that was good. But nothing else was. Not poor Mitch having to run home barefoot in the snow, not Mitch having to take the chance of getting caught by
his
parents when he sneaked back into his house, and not the two of them being separated on the one night they should have been together most.
    God only knew when she’d get the nerve to try again.
    The tears started to come. Abby cried herself to sleep, feeling sorry for herself.
    “This is just the
worst,
” she told her wet pillow. It was
hard
to be sixteen. She just couldn’t imagine how it could be any harder.

 

    Chapter Five
    When she padded downstairs in the morning, Abby wasn’t surprised to realize that Mitch hadn’t called her yet. Yawning, delighted that school was canceled, she took bread out of the refrigerator and put two slices in the toaster.
    “Mom?” she called out in a sleep-hoarse voice.
    “Doing laundry,” came her mother’s voice, up from the basement.
    Abby was relieved not to hear any condemnation in it, no hint of, “Boy, are you in trouble when I get up there, young lady.” She could hear sounds and low voices from her dad’s medical office, meaning he was working in there this morning. When he didn’t come storming out to confront her, either, she figured they’d gotten away with it.
    Gotten away with nothing, she thought, ruefully.
    Mitch would probably sleep in even later than she had, Abby thought, as she pulled out butter and raspberry jam, and he deserved to. She unscrewed the top on the jar of jam, ran a forefinger around the outer edge of it, and then licked off the tangy, seedy overflow. She hoped he hadn’t gotten caught sneaking home. She didn’t envy anybody who had to convince the judge of a false story. It was his profession to be able to winnow truth/wheat from lies/chaff, and it would be especially easy with Mitch.
    Around the time that her toast was about to pop up and the room was filling with the warm, yeasty aroma of homemade bread, Abby got the delightful idea of getting dressed and stomping into Mitch’s house and waking him up. If Nadine would let her into his bedroom, she could jump on him and surprise him awake. He’d hate it for about two seconds, until