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anything.
    “So what do you fish for?” Leo asked. Finding
topics of conversation was becoming exhausting, but he was a
reporter, damn it. He could get anyone to talk.
    “I don’t know. Grandpa said it’s not really
good fishing weather yet, but we go out anyway.”
    “Man time, huh?”
    Max’s eyes widened. “That’s what he calls
it.”
    “That’s what he called it when I was a
kid.”
    “I feel sorry for Grandma, though. We leave
her alone all day.”
    “I’m sure she doesn’t mind too much. She used
to read a book when we’d go. Does she still do that?”
    Max shrugged, dragging his toe along a beam
of the dock.
    Leo looked from his son to the water. Maybe
playing around would loosen the boy up. “Hey, I may have found your
sport.”
    Max scowled up at him. “What’s that?”
    Leo scooped the boy up in his arms—damn, the
kid was heavier than he expected—and swung him out over the water.
“Swimming!”
    Max twisted in Leo’s arms, clutching at his
shirt, and terrified screams carried over the water. Startled, Leo
looked into his son’s frightened face. Instinctively, he tightened
his arms around the boy, holding him against his chest, feeling his
heart hammering. Jesus.
    “I’m sorry, Max. I was just playing around,”
he said into the boy’s ear.
    Max clutched him a moment longer—and it was
wrong for Leo to savor that dependence—before he wriggled free.
Once Leo set him on his feet, Max stomped toward shore.
     
    ***
     
    Dinner was a tense affair. His mother had
looked questioningly from Max to Leo when Max had marched in, frown
set. He’d gone to the kitchen counter and pulled out his homework,
but when Leo tried to approach, Max shot him a look that had Leo
stepping back.
    Dinner was tense, Max barely saying a word,
answering his grandparents’ questions monosyllabically.
    Finally the ordeal was over and his mother
rose from the table.
    “Max, you’re staying here with Grandpa this
evening. Leo, you’re taking me to the town hall meeting.”
    Leo snapped his head up. “Me? Why me?” He
hadn’t been to one since he was a cub reporter and required to
report on them.
    “Because your father hates these things, and
what’s the point in having a strapping son if I can’t show him off
at the town hall meeting?” She offered the first smile he’d seen
since he’d returned home. So she was stressed, too.
    “But—” He looked from his mother to Max.
    “You’ll be home in time to tuck him in. Give
me a moment to fix my hair and put on my face and we’ll go.”
    Leo looked helplessly at Max, who didn’t
return his gaze. Maybe it would be good to get away, to think about
something other than what a failure he was as a father.
     
    ***
     
    “So what happened between you today?” his
mother asked as they walked down the street into town.
    Leo told her of his poor choice of horseplay
as an icebreaker. “Is he afraid of the water? I didn’t think he was
since he goes out on the boat with Dad.”
    She sighed. “Leo, he’s afraid of everything
right now. That’s why we keep him home in the evenings, make him
feel secure with the routine. He’ll come out of it.”
    “But what if he doesn’t?” Perhaps he could
talk to the counselor at school about where he could take Max for
therapy. That wasn’t his first wish, but Max’s screams still ran
along Leo’s nerves. The boy needed help getting past his mother’s
death. Leo had been wrong thinking Max could pull through on his
own.
    Wrong again, that was.
    Leo hadn’t been in the town hall before, but
hadn’t had a need when he was a teen. He’d never thought a meeting
would be so well-attended. He and his mother followed other
citizens to the building, pausing in the logjam at the door. His
mother took his arm and guided him out of the crush toward a man
who stood in the yard, surrounded by several older women.
    “Reverend David, I want you to meet my son
Leo.”
    The man wasn’t much older than Leo, tall,
thin,