Page 8 of Trapper Road

I let Sam take the lead. “Hey, kid. How were the video games?”

“Fine.” Connor’s answer is clipped. His head stays down. He’s thrown himself on the couch in the kind of loose-limbed sprawl only teenagers can do without spinal damage. He’s already got his phone out and is scrolling, reading something. I have the impulse to ask what it is, but I know it’ll just make him feel like I’m prying. I bite my tongue and brown the ground beef with onions instead.

Sam goes and sits down next to him. “I heard you and Lanny got into it today. Want to talk about it?”

Connor almost says yes. I see the impulse. Then I see it slammed behind a steel door, and he says, “No.”

One-word answers. It’s going to be a long night.

Lanny wanders down the hall, yawns, and says, “Smells good, Mom.”

“Good. Then you can chop tomatoes.” I nod toward the cutting board, where the veggies are ready. Lanny makes a little sound of frustration.

“I did this yesterday,” she says. “Isn’t it Connor’s turn?”

“Liar,” he immediately spits back. “I did it yesterday. You’re just too air-headed to remember.”

“Air-head?” Lanny slams the knife down on the counter. Luckily, not point-first. “Liar?”

I note which is the greater offense to her, but I don’t comment.

Connor’s head snaps up, and his eyes—for a split second I go still, because his eyes have never looked so much like his father’s. It’s the fury I see, and it’s scary.

But then he blinks, and it goes away, and he’s my son again. Mine and Sam’s, not Melvin Royal’s. I let the moment pass without lingering on it, already second-guessing what I thought I’d seen.

“Just stop whining about everything,” he tells his sister. “It’s not like chopping some veg is going to break your fingers.”

“Mom, are we or are we not supposed to be splitting chores?” Lanny just has to drag me into it. “Connor didn’t take out the trash yesterday, either. I did. He’s become such a lazy ass—”

I hold up my hand. “Everybody does an equal amount,” I say. “By the way, Sam chopped the onions because you weren’t out here to help. You want to rephrase?”

She silently starts chopping tomatoes again, muttering, “He’s becoming such a little prince, and you can’t even see it.”

That worries me. Is she right? Is Connor becoming the kind of arrogant, entitled teen boy I’ve always dreaded?

“Hey, let’s just get through dinner,” Sam says, and as always, he manages to strike just the right tone, calm and fair and logical. “I know everybody’s hungry. This is going to look a lot better on a full stomach.”

Connor snorts disdainfully, and resumes scrolling his phone. Lanny turns to me and mouths, “See?”

I don’t acknowledge it. Instead I remind myself that if the worst things I have to deal with these days are bickering teens, I should be grateful. I’ll take squabbling siblings over murderous madmen any day of the week. I finish the ground beef and set it aside to prep the rice. One of us has to keep our eye on the ball.

Dinner comes together remarkably well, really. The burritos are delicious, the sauce spicy enough to make my mouth tingle in all the right ways, and Sam’s good humor manages to coax smiles and chat out of Lanny, and toward the end of the dinner, out of my son.

Lanny talks about the college visit to Reyne University she has planned at the end of the week. She’s been excited about it for months — she’s been paired with an existing freshman and will attend classes with her and stay overnight in her dorm. It will be the full college experience, and I have to constantly check my urge to tell her she can’t go.

My insides twitch at the thought of her being so far away from me and on her own. On several occasions I’ve considered booking a hotel room in the nearby town so I can be there if something happens. I have to remind myself that she’s almost an adult. She needs to learn to navigate the world without me.

If I can’t handle her going to college for a weekend visit, there’s no way I’ll be able to handle it if she decides to actually go away to school after graduation. But I also can’t let my fear hold her back in life. It’s not fair to her.

She’s smart and tough. I have to rely on the hope that I’ve taught her well and trained her even better.

When it comes time for Connor to share about his day, he actually responds with more than his usual “it was fine.”

Instead he says, “Today we learned about bullshit climate change crap.”

I nearly choke on my iced tea. “Excuse me?”

“We started a new unit on the environment, and the teacher went off about climate change and how horrible the world is blah blah blah. But the thing is, they’re totally faking the numbers about that stuff. The situation isn’t dire at all. They’re just making it up as a way to control people.”