The Stranger

Cori

He just stood there. “Hey.”

She leaned in and kissed his cheek. Her hair smelled wonderfully of lilacs. “Will you be able to get Ryan?”

“Where is he?”

“A playdate at Max’s.”

Thomas winced. “Don’t call it that, Mom.”

“What?”

“A playdate. He’s in middle school. You have a playdate when you’re six.”

Cori

Adam knew that he was nodding, but he didn’t remember consciously telling himself to do so. “Sure. We’ll meet you at the game. How was Atlantic City?”

“Nice.”

“Uh, guys?” Thomas interrupted. “Can you chitchat later? Coach gets pissed if we aren’t there at least an hour before game time.”

“Right,” Adam said. Then, turning back to Cori

But Cori

He stood on the stoop and watched them walk down the path. Cori

He and Cori

He and Cori

The drinks came. They started talking. It went well. Somewhere late into the night, not long before closing time, Cori

They bonded over their paternal tragedies. And so it began.

When they were first married, they lived in a quiet condo off Interstate 78. He was still trying to help people as a public defender. She was teaching in the roughest neighborhoods of Newark, New Jersey. When Thomas was born, it was time to move into a proper house. That, it seemed, was just the way it went. Adam hadn’t cared much where they lived. He didn’t care if the house they chose was contemporary or something more classic like this one. He wanted Cori

Maybe he should have stopped it then, but as a young man, he hadn’t seen the point. He had let her pick this specific house too, because it was what she wanted. The town. The house. The garage. The cars. The boys.

And what had Adam wanted?

He didn’t know, but this house—this neighborhood—had been a financial stretch. Adam ended up leaving his job as a public defender for the far higher pay at the Bachma

Nice, right?

Tripp Evans had wistfully called it “living the dream.” The American dream. Cori

“You didn’t have to stay with her. . . .”

But of course, that wasn’t true. The dream is made of delicate yet invaluable stuff. You don’t casually destroy it. How ungrateful, selfish, and warped to not realize how lucky you are.

He opened the door and headed into the kitchen. The kitchen table was a mess, done up in Early American Homework. Thomas’s algebra textbook was open to a problem that asked him to complete the square in the quadratic function f given by f(x) = 2x2 – 6x = 4. A number two pencil lay snuggled in the book’s crevice. Sheets of white-with-light-blue-squares graph paper were strewn everywhere. Some of the sheets had fallen to the floor.

Adam bent down, picked them up, and put them back on the table. He stared down at the homework for a moment.

Tread gently, Adam reminded himself. This wasn’t just his and Cori

Chapter 6

Thomas’s game was just starting when Adam and Ryan arrived.

With a quiet “Later, Dad,” Ryan immediately peeled off to hang with fellow younger siblings and not risk being seen with a real-live parent. Adam headed to the left side of the field, the “away team” section, where the other Cedarfield parents would be.

There were no metallic stands, but some parents brought folding chairs so as to have a place to sit. Cori

Adam nodded to a few parents as he strolled toward his wife. Tripp Evans stood in the corner with several other fathers, all with arms crossed and sunglasses, looking more like the Secret Service than spectators. To the right, a smirking Gaston hung with his cousin Daz (yes, everyone called him that), who owned CBW Inc., a high-end corporate investigation firm that specialized in employee background checks. Cousin Daz also ran less extensive background checks on every coach in the league to make sure that none had a criminal record or anything like that. Gaston had insisted the lacrosse board hire the high-priced CBW Inc. for this seemingly simple task, one that could be done far more cheaply online, because, hey, what are families for?

Cori

“The coach is always rotating the lines,” Adam said. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

But she would and she was. “Pete Baime started over him.” Son of Gaston. That explained the smirk. “He’s not even cleared from his concussion yet. How can he be back already?”

“Do I look like his doctor, Cori

“Come on, Tony!” a woman shouted. “Make the clear!”

Adam didn’t have to be told that the woman shouting was Tony’s mother. Had to be. When a parent calls out to her own child, you can always tell. There is that harsh ping of disappointment and exasperation in their voice. No parent believes they sound this way. Every parent does. We all hear it. We all think that only other parents do it but that magically we are immune.

An old Croatian proverb Adam had learned in college applied here: “The hunchback sees the hump of others—never his own.”

Three minutes passed. Thomas still hadn’t gotten in. Adam sneaked a glance at Cori