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“I’m fine,” I say.

I’m not, and the way the two words come out—shaky, barely there—makes it obvious that I’m lying. When she was sober, Mom wouldn’t have let the brush-off fly. Now that sobriety is a distant memory, she’s not even asking the question. The fact that Dad is means that I’ve been outplayed. I’m trapped in a deer blind, not able to run away or raise my voice above a whisper without scaring off game.

“Dammit, you’re not,” he pushes. “When you’re home all you do is sit in your room. And when you’re not—”

“I’m with Ethan,” I interrupt.

“That kid’s a black hole,” Dad snorts. “Don’t know how a stand-up guy like Todd Brimley could make such a shit son.”

“Yeah, at least in our case it makes sense,” I say, looking off into the distance, where the fog is just starting to lift. “You’re a piece of shit. I’m a piece of shit. The logic checks out.”

Dad’s silent for a second, and there’s a flicker of movement across the field. I don’t point it out, don’t feel like killing something today.

“Say what you want about me,” Dad says. “But you’re not a piece of shit, Micah. You made a mistake.”

“A mistake?” I say. “Somebody got hurt, Dad. That’s not—”

“And why’d that happen, huh?” Dad asks, cutting me off. “Don’t think for one second that I don’t know. Don’t think I can’t smell it on you or haven’t noticed it’s getting worse. Who do you want to grow up to be like, Micah? Me, or your mother?”

“And why does Mom drink, anyway?” I shoot back. “Don’t you think for one second that I don’t know.”

Dad goes quiet again. I can feel him staring at me, but I still can’t look at him.

“I’m sorry, son,” he finally says.

“It’s not me you should be apologizing to,” I tell him.

“Your mom isn’t . . .” He trails off. “I don’t even know if she can hear me anymore.”

“Is that what the dispatcher’s for?” I ask. “Listening?”

“Christ, you know what she’s for,” he snaps. “But it’s not just that. She does listen, Micah. She’s—”

“Please don’t list the wonderful attributes of your girlfriend right now, Dad,” I say tightly.

“Right,” he says, sighing. “I won’t tell you that you’ll understand someday because I’d like to believe that you won’t.”

“Commit adultery?” I ask, with a harsh laugh. “Yeah, fingers crossed.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that we need to talk about your drinking,” Dad pushes forward.

“Mom drinks for a reason,” I say, finally turning to look at him. “So do I.”

There are new wrinkles around his eyes, and a few furrows in his brow I haven’t seen before. I always thought of him as unchanging, a pillar that other things break against. Then I became one of those things, and now he’s just a man. A man that has no idea what to say to his son, who is drowning on dry land.

“You know why,” I finally manage to say. It’s a whisper, but it’s said. It’s out, floating in the air between us. Something moves behind his eyes, something dark against the bright blue, a flicker of shame or maybe regret. Something that makes him look away first, even though I’m the one who’s crying.

“It wasn’t a fucking mistake, Dad,” I say, voice barely squeezing past my closing throat. “It’s something I fucking did. And you want to just forget about it, but I can’t. It’s in my head, and I can’t get it out. I can’t stop thinking somebody’s going to figure out—”

“Okay, okay,” Dad says, reaching for me. I fall into him, crying onto his chest like I’m a little kid. But I’m not. Because when I was a kid and I did something wrong, I would try to hide it. I’d break Mom’s flower vase and push the pieces under my bed or jam the wrapper from the candy bar I stole at the gas station all the way to the bottom of the trash.

Then something happened that I couldn’t hide, but I wasn’t a kid anymore. I’d held my phone in bloody hands, finger hovering over the Emergency Call button. But I didn’t call 911. I called my dad. My dad who smells like a younger woman’s perfume. I pull away from him, wiping my eyes.

“No one’s going to find out, son,” Dad says.

It’s highly unlikely, at this point. I have to agree.

But not impossible.