{Pete}

When he came around the back, Jon was in a deck chair in the sun, his head leaning back against the cushion. His face looked pale, and he was hugging his arm against himself. Pete made two tall iced teas and brought them out, ice cubes chinking softly against the glasses. Jon opened his eyes when Pete set his on the table next to him and took a gulp of the cold drink without saying anything.

"You keeping up with the meds they gave you?" Pete asked.

"Yes," Jon said.

Pete shook the propane tank next to the BBQ. "How do hamburgers sound for supper?"

"Fine."

Pete scraped the brush over the grill, the sharp smell of charcoal and grease filling his nose. "I guess you're pretty bummed not to be able to play guitar or do any of your normal things, huh."

"It's just a couple weeks, Dad. I can deal," Jon said.

Pete glanced at him, wishing he could scrape a little of the crusty attitude off his son and get him to sparkle again. He guessed Jon was angry at him for something—either because he thought Pete was angry with him for messing up his bike or something else. If he was already the bad guy, he decided he would try and come at things head on. "Did you already know about Cary's sister?"

He might as well have lit the propane under Jon's chair. His son sat bolt upright. "What the hell kind of person do you think I am, Dad? If I had known, don't you think I would have told you before you let him come live with us?" Jon shoved to his feet and stormed inside, slamming the door.

Pete scrubbed the last spot of charring hard enough to scrape the steel, then straightened, letting out his breath. That was something he would have to address later.

He was sitting in the deck chair, swinging the BBQ flipper between his knees with the sizzle of meat behind him when Cary came around the corner of the house, carrying the shovel. There was dirt on his knees, and the back of his T-shirt was dark with sweat. He stood with his hand propped on the shovel, surveying the weed-choked flower bed that ran the length of the 40-foot fence. He turned a little toward Pete, speaking without looking at him. "Finished in front. Should I do back here?"

Pete got up and lifted the lid to check the burgers. "These are almost done. Just wash up for supper."

Cary nodded, setting the shovel against the fence.

"You mind getting out the buns and mustard and ketchup?" Pete asked. "Jon's laid up, and Mel's not feeling so well, either."

"Yes, sir." Cary said it quietly, but Pete heard him as he went by. His forehead wrinkled, and he pressed his flipper against the burgers, feeling the widening divide between his son and the boy who had just been his closest friend.

Jon was civil at the dinner table—Pete wondered if he should congratulate himself for teaching him to fake politeness when bitter hostility was closer to the truth. Jon passed the food and put mustard and ketchup on Bea's bun with his one good hand. He made conversation with Pete about church the next morning, his eyes staying flat and grey. He never once looked at Cary or spoke to him.

Cary was silent and nearly invisible as he ate in his place next to Bea. Pete saw him slide looks at Jon when his son had his head turned away, his own expression guarded as a bank vault. With a sinking feeling, he realized this was probably a normal mealtime for Cary, navigating around someone who was angry with him. It stung to watch his son treat his friend in this cold way. He wondered what he was going to do with these two boys living under his roof this summer.

{Jon}

Jon's painkiller had kicked in again by supper, and he thought he had acted normally, passing the food when people asked and taking his dishes to the sink when he was done. He reached for the tap, and then withdrew his arm with a little gasp. Yet another thing he couldn't do until his ribs healed.

"I'll get those," his father said quietly behind him.

Jon turned. "Where's Mom?" he asked, feeling anger rise when he met his dad's eyes.

Pete held his look. "She's just tired, son. Those hospital chairs are none too comfortable to sleep in."

So he had guilt to add to the toxic storm roiling in his head, so dark that he couldn't see his way through. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cary duck his head and hunch his shoulders as he passed. It stirred his anger up a little hotter. He had never worked harder at anything than he'd worked at being Cary's friend—most days he wouldn't have even called it work. He had really thought he knew Cary—really thought Cary was the kind of friend who would watch his back the same way he did his.

Bea got down from the table and caught up to him in the hall. "Jonee, can you come watch me play dolls?"

"Sure," he said, since he wasn't good for much else. He set his hand on top of her head, feeling her warmth through the tangle of her hair. The smile she gave him took the edge off all the garbage he was feeling.

"They're on a holiday," Bea said, heading for the front door. "They're playing in the sun."

He sat on the front step with his arm propped on his knee, the sunlight warm on the side of his face while Bea played with her dolls in the freshly turned dirt in front of the house.

"Are you gonna plant some flowers, Bea?" Jon teased.

She showed him her dimple. "Cary's gonna plant some."

That unscrewed the smile from his face. Bea's head was bent so the pale skin showed at the nape of her neck, her knee was crooked up to her ear, and her bare toes dug into the dirt. It hurt him to even consider Bea not breathing anymore, let alone someone snuffing out the life spark in her little body. There was a hole in the world where a girl like Bea was supposed to be, and Cary had done that with his own hands. Jon couldn't put it together with the person living in his house now—at least not in any kind of way that allowed him to look Cary in the eyes and speak to him as a friend. It was too horrible for speech.

His mind wouldn't quit fishing pieces out of his memory and showing him all the times Cary did tell him in every way except with words—and Jon didn't believe him. Was it possible for Cary to change enough to live in their family? How did a person go on from ... murder? How did that act not leave a permanent mark—like the mark the Bible said Cain bore for killing his brother?

Jon eased back to lean on his arm, shifting to stretch out his legs. There were some wicked gouges on his calf where the teeth of the gear wheel had caught him when he fell. If Cary hadn't been down there to pull the bike off him... he lifted his eyes up to where the sky was hazy and pink above the blocky shapes of houses. Could a person do enough good things in their life to make up for erasing the life of another? Did Cary know how much he owed for what he'd done?

Jon took a slow breath, feeling like he'd abruptly run into the corner of one of those houses. He saw Cary in his massive, immaculate house, his bruises moving with his shoulders as he pulled his sweater back down.

He knew.

Jon shaded his eyes against the light cutting directly across his face. The shape of the next thought was so bright and hard that he couldn't face it directly. He had been so angry that he'd wanted Cary to hurt for that, and Cary's face as he had ducked his head between his fists had said plainly that he'd known he had it coming.

Shame buried Jon so deep that for a second, he couldn't hear or breathe. Like he was so much better than Conall Douglas, paying out hurt or anger or whatever his damage was on the people closest to him. That Cary had done what he did and lied about it didn't make it right for Jon to hurt him in return.

He read Bea her bedtime stories and brushed and flossed his teeth meticulously. He even painfully straightened up his bedroom, putting off doing anything about the stone in his middle, weighing him down. He wasn't going to be able to go to sleep like this.

When he pushed open the door to his dad's old study, Cary was in the corner of his bed, bent over his drawing book. He held still, watching Jon with his pencil just lifted off his page.

Jon couldn't look at him directly. "I shouldn't have hit you and pushed you down." The words stung his nose and he set his face, glaring at the corner. "We're still not okay, but that wasn't right. I expect better of myself, and instead, I acted no better than ..." He actually couldn't make his mouth say the name.

Cary looked down at his hand, curled into a fist around his pencil.

This was supposed to be an apology—Jon was pretty sure he wasn't going to feel better until he said sorry. "So I'm sorry. Just because you ... did that and lied all this time doesn't mean I get to try and hurt you."

There was a silence. "Not 'try,'" Cary said, quiet and flat. "You did good, Jon. You hit hard like I said."

Jon made a sharp noise and put his hands to his eyes. "That's me. Learn from the best."

The quiet was heavy.

"If you want me gone, just say the word," Cary said. His voice was so toneless that Jon couldn't tell if he had any feelings about what he was saying. "I thought your dad might kick me out anyways. Wouldn't make much difference if it was you."

"My dad's not kicking you out. He said you could stay." It was hard to think about anything except how angry he was, and how much his body hurt standing here.

Cary looked at him from under his eyebrows. "This is who I've always been. You didn't know that before, but you do now. So if you want me to go, I'll go. I won't ... do anything stupid. I'll just find another place to be. So you don't have to worry. And I'll be out of your life."

He couldn't deny how tempting that was. Cary's hands, pressing into the blankets over his knees, made him sick to look at. Jon looked aside. "My dad made the call," he said shortly. "It's his house—it's his to make."

Cary bent his head. "We're still not okay." He said it exactly like Jon had said it to him, like it was the answer.

Jon's hands closed, his anger dangerously close to boiling over. "There's no take-backs for the thing you did. You know that, right?"

Cary slid forward and reached underneath his bed. He got up and came toward Jon, catching his wrist before he could draw back, squeezing so hard that Jon's hand splayed open. He set his knife in Jon's palm, the folded blade hard and cold.

"Here." His voice had roughened and he looked straight in Jon's eyes, pressing his hand closed like he would mould Jon's fingers around the knife. "Take that. Throw it away. Stick it in me—I don't care." Cary let go, holding his open hands up. "I don't want it. That's not me—not anymore."

Jon dropped his eyes, weighing the knife in his hand. "Is there more you haven't told me?"

Cary made a sound. "Yes. 'Course. Kids I did shitty things to and shit done to me ..." His breath sounded sharp going in. "Jesus—like you could even hear it all." His lips pressed white, and he crossed his arms, his palms pressed flat against his chest. "I told you. I told you this was what I was. That I shouldn't stay. That we shouldn't be—friends." He seemed to get stuck there, putting his eyes on the wall beside the door. "I didn't lie." His voice spun as thin and tight as a wire. "You didn't listen."

Jon shoved the knife in his pocket and turned aside. "I think that's true." He looked sideways at Cary, seeing again the difference in him from the day they first met—the way Cary had stood straight and looked him in the eyes, and didn't have to hide his arms under long sleeves. "I'm not sorry that I didn't believe you and you came here. But you're not ... who I thought you were."

He felt how blunt his words were, chopping out the shape of what little he knew. He couldn't put a smiley face on shit this deep. "You can stay. If it matters to you for me to say that. But we're not ... we're not friends. I don't know how to be friends with this ... you." Cary hadn't moved, his face turned aside. Even if he was the person Jon thought he knew, he couldn't have said what was going on in Cary's head right now. "So I'm sorry if that doesn't seem fair, but ... that's where I'm at."

"That's fair," Cary said, soft and flat. He pushed his hand stiffly towards the door. "And you can stay the fuck out of my room."

Jon's jaw clenched on anything he might say back to that and he turned and left, shutting the door behind him. For a second, he'd been relieved to be completely honest, but if he was completely honest with himself now—he didn't feel any better.