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and was standing behind him. "Leave him alone, Mike. He had to find out."
    My father kept his eyes on me. "You think I'm a failure, don't you? You read one article written sixteen years ago and you think I'm a failure?"
    "I never said that."
    "Yeah? Well, that's what you're thinking, isn't it?"
    "Stop badgering him, Mike."
    "I'm not badgering him. I'm asking him a question."
    "You are badgering him."
    He glared at her, and then he walked quickly down the stairs. My mom and I listened as the front door opened, then slammed shut. His Jeep started up and we heard him drive off, fast.

9
    Once he was gone, my mom went downstairs and I returned to my room. I picked up my Game Boy, but there was no way I could play anything. Around noon, my mom called me down to lunch. Everything looked the way it always did: The cut flowers were in the vase in the center of the cream-colored table in the kitchen. My sandwich, a sliced apple, and a chocolate chip cookie sat perfectly arranged on a rose-patterned plate. A glass of milk was just to the right. Across from my food were my mom's bowl of plain yogurt with blueberries and her cup of tea. Everything neat and tidy, the way she liked it.
    I managed to eat half of the sandwich and most of the apple. She finished about the same amount of her lunch. When I was done, I scraped my plate clean and put it in the sink. I turned to go back upstairs, but my mom stopped me. "Sit down a minute, Mick. There's something you need to hear."
    I sat.
    For a moment she looked out the window at our rosebush. Then she turned back to me. "All those things you found out on the Internet, I know they hurt you. But your dad didn't kill anybody. He didn't rob a
bank or burn down a building. I want you to remember that it's just football. Okay? Just a game."
    I started to answer, then stopped.
    "What?" she said.
    I shook my head. "Nothing."
    "Tell me."
    "It's more than a game to him, Mom," I said. "And it's more than a game to me, too."
    She frowned. "Only if you let it be, Mick."
    ***
    My dad didn't come home for dinner that night, but my mom told me not to worry. "He called. He drove up into the mountains, to Roslyn. I told him to rent a cabin and stay the night. He'll be back tomorrow."
    I ate half a hamburger for dinner. Afterward, I kept going through what I was going to say to him when he came back. I'd try not to be mad at him, and for a while I'd convince myself that my mom was right, but then I'd get mad at him all over again. All that stuff about his ankle sprain. He should have told me the truth.
    He returned Sunday afternoon. We ate lunch together, a fresh bunch of flowers in the center of the table. My mom acted as if everything were normal, but he was stiff, like a stranger, and my stomach was in
knots. I was afraid I'd throw up if I ate, but I was afraid if I didn't eat he'd ask me what was wrong. I picked at the cheese sandwich, ate most of a banana, and drank half my milk. After lunch I started back up the stairs to my room, but his voice stopped me. "Let's go for a drive, Mick," he said.
    His Wrangler is a hardtop, but with the windows down plenty of fresh air blows through. He drove out across the Aurora Bridge, to West Seattle, and down to Alki Beach. On the way we talked about nothing: the sunshine, the Seahawks, the Mariners.
    He parked along the water at Alki. We walked on the pathway above the beach for a half-mile or so. Then he spotted a picnic table. "Let's sit down," he said. Puget Sound was a glittering dark blue, its islands a dark green, the sky dotted with puffy white clouds. It was an incredible day, and I couldn't have felt worse.
    We sat across from each other. He had a toothpick in his mouth, and he'd chew on it a little, then take it out, and then chew on it some more. Finally he flicked it onto the beach. "That article you read? Everything in it was true. I was a screw-off, and it didn't start with the Chargers. All through high school and college, I dogged practices, was late for