Page 143 of What Boys Learn

But once they had him transferred to the sheriff’s boat, wrapped in a blanket and wedged between Robert’s warm body and my own, he broke down. Sobbing and shuddering. Trying to form the words about Curtis, the drive, the car, the girls—not just Lenora, but the other one they almost picked up. Victims that narrowly escaped.

Curtis, too, might have escaped if a second Coast Guard boat hadn’t arrived just as Sheriff Bruckner was departing, before the authorities finally understood this was no accident, certainly no mere instance of engine trouble, but something that would take hours of interviews to untangle.

The first thing that struck me, seeing Benjamin and Lenora, both, was not only how near death they appeared in their hypothermic states, but how young. Even though Benjamin had been in a growth spurt. Even though Lenora was a young woman, with curves. She was fifteen, we were told by the sheriff, who kept shaking his head and saying, “You’d think a girl would have more smarts than that.”

He’d said it three times already when I interrupted. “Her prefrontal cortex won’t be mature until she’s in her midtwenties, and boys are two years behind the girls. They’re basically babies. Could you stop blaming them, just for a little while? Her, especially?”

Robert looked across Benjamin’s shivering body at me, with a wistful smile. The sheriff moved to the back of the boat to rummage through a box for some winter hats and toe warmers for the kids, Lenora especially. Least he could do, instead of judging her.

“I might have an extra sweatshirt,” I started to say, then stopped, remembering. I’d never had to take the tire iron out, because we weren’t the ones who boarded Curtis’s boat. Was I glad to have been deprived of that opportunity? Probably. Not entirely.

The hot fire of panic had smoldered down to a red-hot coal that would burn a long time. However many detectives or lawyers or journalists I had to talk to, I’d make sure he got what was coming to him.

The ride back was fast but windy, cold, and bumpy, and the whole time, my thoughts toggled back and forth. Seeing how Lenora looked at fifteen, I had to think about myself at thirteen. So much less developed. So much more naïve. Unable, truly, to think about consequences. No wonder Martha’s funeral had been so strange and surreal, as had everything that followed. No wonder I had talked so little for years—not because I was good at keeping secrets, but because I was in long-term shock. I hadn’t just clung to my brother, the night of the car accident and the first years after, because of a twisted morality. I’d clung to him because I had nothing and nobody else, and I was stupid besides.

No, not stupid. Just young.

Then I thought about Curtis again. About how even now, with the worst of the danger past and the resolve to pursue justice clear in my mind, I could still imagine that rough, cold tire iron in my hand. I could visualize the sensation of metal cracking skull, the vibration that would have flowed up my arm, into my shoulder—the sheer determination it would have taken. I could understand, intellectually at least, the pleasure of seeing him collapse. But would I have done any of that, really? I could have held the tire iron, but would I have swung it? And kept swinging?

Back and forth—Martha and Curtis. Martha and Curtis. And me, of course. Thirteen, thirty-seven, a girl who knew nothing, a mother who thought she knew more. I thought about how little we know, truly, about anyone. What they’re thinking about. What they’re feeling. What they’re capable of.

After the kids were cleared by paramedics and before we gave complete police statements, it was suggested we might stay overnight, locally, just in case the police wanted to talk to us in person more than once over the next twenty-four hours. But Benjamin wanted to go home that night, and no one said we couldn’t, as long as we could handle talking a couple of hours or however long it took—a sign I took as further confirmation that no one blamed my kid and he was being treated, appropriately, as a victim.

Benjamin explained everything he knew about Curtis and his connection to Weber and to Ewan. He told the police that Curtis groomed him, or tried to. The more I heard, the more I felt like someone whose car dies on a railroad crossing and manages to get it restarted just yards away from an advancing locomotive. How lucky I was, in some ways, that Benjamin was stubborn and skeptical, even while he was also vulnerable and difficult.

We weren’t home yet when Robert got a call from his friend on the force in Fond Du Lac. We’d seen Curtis arrested, but in the time since, the police had also gotten a warrant and found Curtis’s damaged SUV, parked in Lake Forest. Benjamin had already told the police about Curtis’s braggy account of playing some role in Christopher Weber’s accident. Now, they’d believe it.

Robert said, “Once the Weber accident is locked down, they’ll look into the suspicious drowning of his wife and daughter. You’ll see.”

Maybe it was because I’d spent the last many years aware of famous, powerful men who had gotten away with galling crimes. Maybe it was because I knew, as Ewan’s sister, that the sickest men are the best at manipulating people and evading punishment. I had a hard time believing Curtis would serve time.

“He will,” Robert insisted. “Do you trust me? Do you think maybe I know a thing or two, now?”

“I do.”

• • •

First, I just wanted Benjamin home. Then I wanted himbetter. But it isn’t fair, expecting trauma to lead to instant growth.

Two weeks after the rescue, Lenora’s father wanted to drive down to Pleasant Park and take Benjamin to dinner, to thank him.

“I don’t want him to thank me,” Benjamin said, turning away.

I held out the phone. “Please.”

Reluctantly, he took it. I watched and listened as he mostly nodded, except for a few words.Okay. And,No, it’s all right. And,No, I . . . no, I, don’t really want . . . I mean, thanks but . . . No.

We tell our children they can set boundaries, and then we take it back when we ourselves want them to do something. To go along. But Benjamin wasn’t going to go along with this.

When he got off, his face was red. But he didn’t get angry. He didn’t withdraw. He talked to me.

“Lenora’s dad kept offering me things, like money. Or gift cards. Like I’m some charity case.”

“No, like you’re a kid who saved his daughter’s life.”

“I told him she can text me. That’s fine. I like her. But I’m not going anywhere with him.”

I wondered aloud if Benjamin was just skittish of strangers now, especially older male strangers, after what happened with Curtis.