Nobody wanted to get groceries with me, so I went myself. I couldn't blame them. The aisles of the market were narrow, unkempt, and flat mean. I clutched bare cash in my pocket, picking out milk and sauce-helper packets one handed. Though I kept my gun in my purse with safety on, others carried theirs in hand.

A man who could've been eighty pushed a cart with the barrel of his in its cup-holder cutout, where I used to stow Karen's sippy cups. They always fell through and clanked, embarrassing us.

It was enough to make you wish for a Shop-All.

Returning to the neighborhood, I swerved around cratered asphalt and passed lawns resembling freshly tilled farmland—sprinkler pipe theft had skyrocketed—to my house.

I had one foot out of the Prius, girded to face my own personal anarchy, when a figure appeared on the porch.

Jacket hanging slack to the thighs. Hoodie underneath. Strides barely leaving the walk, dragging behind undone laces like pond scum.

Zach.

"Later," he said on his way by.

"How about, 'Nice to see you, Mother?'" I said. "Or 'Thank you for getting those wasabi almonds I asked for'?"

Zach glanced at the Prius's blocky trunk.

"Don't worry, I'll get them out in a sec," I said. "Where were you going?"

"A meeting."

"A meeting of what?"

He scratched behind his ear, up inside the hoodie. "It's like, I guess, my gang."

The word hit me like a truck.

"Don't overreact," he said. "I have to be in a gang. My friends all joined this one, Spider?" He raised his jacket cuff on a tattoo(!) of a stylized black-and-red web. "It's one of the good ones."

"One of the good ones?"

"If you're not in Spider, people assume you're in Reich or Spree or Deathfinger. You have to declare your alliance. It's like prison."

Zach said this without a hint of foreboding. I mastered an urge to wrap him in a bear hug, knowing if I didn't match my son's matter-of-fact tone he would dismiss me as hysterical and shut down.

I asked, "How long have you been in Spider?"

He shrugged. "I dunno."

I had been back from France a full week, and he was only telling me of a gang affiliation now? It did fit the general trend. Zach was quieter lately, keeping greater parts of the day to himself. Instead of arguing with me, he was more likely to roll his eyes and go straight up to his room—followed in short order by spikes of angry music thumping through the ceiling.

Does he think I won't care that he's in a gang? Or that I'm powerless to stop him?

Maybe it was indifference. He didn't say anything because he simply didn't give a rip if I knew—and was only explaining now because it'd slipped out.

I repeated, "How long?"

"Couple months. You were were in Switzerland when I joined."

I tried closing my heart to the accusation.

"Thank you for telling me the truth," I said—assuming that was the truth. "But you're not going to this meeting. You're done with Spider."

"What? But I told you, I was completely honest about—"

"I don't care if the world is different. I don't care about your friends. Under my roof, gang membership is not an option."

Zach scoffed. "Could you be any more of a walking public service announcement, Mom?"

"Yes, I could be." I was standing with my arms crossed, keys biting into the opposite biceps. "I could be a whole lot more of a public service announcement—if I have to."

He answered with silent rage.

I said, "We're spending today as a family. I haven't been home enough lately—I know that. I hate that. But I'm home now."

I led him inside by the hand, whose palm showed the upper silks of a spiderweb.

Battlements littered the living room, Karen's cardboard doll fortresses—which had expanded to cover three-fourths of the carpet. Now Karen was draping a length of string painstakingly over the tops of four structures, tongue out in concentration, struggling to lay it so there was no sag.

"It's a shield," she said. "For the dolls. If it's too low, their enemies can shoot inside."

I answered with an indistinct "Hmmnn" and stepped through gingerly to the kitchen, a dozen grocery bags between my fingers.

"Zach, stop!"

Karen's scream startled me—I fumbled and barely held onto a carton of eggs. I left bags on any free patch of floor or counter, then rushed to the living room.

Zach stood by a slanting wreck of cardboard.

"Come on—you know better! She worked hard on that."

"I didn't do anything! How can you accuse me when you didn't even see?"

"I don't need to, it's obvious," I said, although Karen's string—now that I looked more closely—could have tipped the structure from afar. "Why else would she yell?"

"Because she's cuckoo."

"Zachary!"

He stomped away upstairs, faking an arm-pinch at Karen as he left.

I sank to my knees beside Karen, who was sobbing softly and worrying string between her palms.

"He destroyed the hospital! Now...if they get hurt, what happens?" She sniveled. "I can't fix them. They can't be fixed. They just have to die."

Looking at her pile of dolls, she was anguish incarnate.

I crawled to her spectacularly collapsed hospital. Its cardboard walls were bent, every miniature creation inside crushed or displaced. A matchbox bed flattened. What might've been a nurse, a Popsicle stick in a glued-paper "dress," snapped in two.

I picked up the nurse halves.

"It's alright, Pooh Bear," I said. "We have tape."

She smiled seeing the nurse in my hands. "Thanks, Mom."

I was reaching for the Scotch roll—the contents of the art bin had more or less permanently relocated here—when a voice sounded from the kitchen.

"How do you put them away, Molly? Lids on or lids separate?"

Granny.

She was asking about Tupperware.

I picked up the tape. While I was there, I swept a hand under the couch and came up with three Shopkins, two rubber band bracelets, and a prune. I think a prune—the lint and carpet fibers made it hard to tell.

Do you ever look around your house, just swivel your head and take it all in, all 360 degrees of filth, and think, Burn it?

Burn everything. Mail, toys, that wilted sock on the fireplace—every last thing into the bonfire.

I called to Granny, "Either way is fine!"

She didn't hear.

"This one still has crusties—that dishwasher's lousy! And lookee, it's got a cracked lid too. Where do you put cracked lids?"

I breathed. I set the Shopkins and bracelets on a shelf, balled the prune in a scrap of paper.

Then I helped Karen more.

We got the hospital back upright, though it took half a roll of tape and didn't seem likely to withstand a stray kneecap. Then we remade her miniatures one by one, passing scissors and crayons, the cat swishing behind our backs. I loved watching her little fingers pinch and twist, and those tickled grins when she got something exactly how she wanted it.

Grandma kept hollering about lids.

Karen said, "Go help her, Mommy. I can finish by myself."

Her eyes were perfect then, such tender pools of green. I squeezed her hand and had to make myself let go.

In the kitchen, I helped Granny put away the Tupperware. She declared with arms akimbo that my system made no sense. Why did the round ones get separated from their lids while the square ones didn't?

I explained I didn't have a system.

This bothered her. She tried convincing me to nest smaller sizes inside larger. See how much space y'get back? I told her I wasn't ready for a paradigm shift. We did agree to segregate cracked lids in their own drawer.

Next I started the stew, slicing onions and browning meat. I diced peppers for salad. I tracked down the step stool and finally nixed that cobweb on the ceiling.

I was starting to feel decent about my progress when the work of different spiders roiled me.

Zach, back in his hoodie.

"We discussed this," I said. "This is a family day."

"You discussed it." He slumped into the door-well. "My point of view didn't matter."

"It matters—but not if your point of view is that you need to attend a gang meeting."

His smug face seemed to say, And you just proved my point.

"Discuss," I said. "Tell me why it's so important. Let's talk about ways to fill those needs through constructive outlets."

"Stop, Mom. Just stop the psychology lesson. We're supposed to be divvying up vigils. I won't get one if I don't show."

"What's a vigil?"

"It's a watch shift. Deathfinger keeps trying to hit our hideout."

"And you're—so, they want you to take a turn? To guard the hideout?"

His chin ticked up.

These vigils made me think of Durwood's "patrols," which had intensified in the days since the guys had moved into the tanning salon. It terrified me to think of him and Sue-Ann wandering around in this, all the ways I person could die now.

And Durwood Oak Jones might've been the most able, circumspect person I had ever known.

Whereas Zach...

"Granted, I'm no expert on gangs," I said, "but this one sounds wrong for you."

"I told you, Spider's good!"

"Not good enough—if they're putting members in the line of fire like this."

He gritted his teeth and looked about, opening and closing a fist.

I continued, "Friends are important, Zach. Who you associate with. It can make a big difference in your life."

His eyes sharpened. "Yeah, 'cuz you're so good at choosing friends. Like Quaid and Durwood."

A bubble formed in my conviction. "What about them?"

"They totally kill people! Which is something my friends, who you think're so bad"—he jutted his teeth forward—"don't do."

"Zach!"

"Tell me I'm wrong. I've seen Durwood staring into the hallway mirror, holding his head for minutes. Dude has serious demons."

There was no good answer for this. I was formulating a bad one, charting a logical path between acknowledging the double standard and stonewalling on "I am your mother, don't question me" grounds when Zach hit me with another whammy.

"And no offense, Mom? But I think you're getting played by Quaid."

He said this in a stunted voice, that half-icky, half-embarrassed tone children use when discussing their parents' love life.

No way was I engaging there.

"I appreciate your concern," I said, "and it's obvious you notice more than you let on. You're turning into a thoughtful young man. I'm proud."

Zach twisted on the ball of his skater shoe.

"Don't worry about Quaid Rafferty," I said, smirking. "I see him coming from miles away."

I didn't, of course—and my son's comment got me thinking fresh about the situation. The non-situation.

How much easier would things have been around here with two capable, sound-minded adults? If instead of Eunice organizing our bags according to paper-plastic-colored-plastic designation, becoming distracted and leaving loose piles to billow off chaotically, I had an equal partner?

(I'm terrible for thinking it, but I swear there are times when I wish we still chucked everything in one trash.)

Who would that other capable, sound-minded adult even be? I had one enthusiastic volunteer—Garrison—and a second in Quaid more interested in part-time duty.

Garrison was thrilling in a way, with his gusto and centerfold looks. We'd kissed on a few occasions after Davos, out back of Lewd Brew in his car or the Prius. He'd said he wanted to meet my kids, but I had demurred—imagining the weirdness between him and Zach.

Garrison was twenty-three years old. For all he understood, children could've been been artwork. Or betta fish.

And Quaid? Where do I start?

In the space of one weekend, he could veer between being the most empathetic man imaginable—rubbing my neck on the couch, chatting sweetly about any topic I desired until we both decided the time for chat had passed—and showing exactly zero consideration for my feelings.

Unanswered texts. Ignored calls. When I would ask Durwood if he'd seen his partner during these stretches, the ex-marine would find his boots in sudden need of inspection.

Now Eunice entered the kitchen. She had finished soaking her backup dentures upstairs and held a freshly-rinsed Tupperware.

"What's your system for putting these away?"

I looked at her. The cataract looked especially milky today. Her toes were half out of one slipper.

No more watching them alone, I decided. She can't.

I can't.

Zach stepped forward from the threshold. Eyes on me, he reached for her Tupperware.

"I know where they go, Granny," he said. "You've been working a new needlepoint, haven't you?"

She nodded, and released the oblong base and lid into his hands.

Zach said, "I'd like to see it, if you'll let me. It's up in your room, right?"

Then he helped her to the stairs, slipping off his hoodie.