“I don’t know why I sent the messages,” Ryan said. “I never did weed. And I swear I never sold any.”
Emily sat on the bed beside him and rubbed his back. “We just don’t understand why you’d write those things? And why you’d sneak on the Internet when you’ve worked so hard to earn back everyone’s trust?”
The “why” questions dominated the next twenty minutes. Sean knew they’d never get a satisfying answer. But Emily, as always, said all the right things—things Sean was too angry or too impatient or too stubborn to say. She told Ryan to get cleaned up for dinner. He would not be ruining the celebration of Dad’s new job.
“Do we have to tell Abby about this at dinner?” Ryan asked.
“Tonight’s about Dad,” Emily said. Another lawyerly technique, answering him without answering him. She would have been a great litigator had she decided to go into practice rather than stay home with the kids. Emily gestured to Sean that it was time to leave Ryan’s room. You had to pace yourself with teenagers, she always said.
As they padded downstairs, Sean said, “If this is middle school, what’s high school gonna be like?”
Emily didn’t reply, she just sighed.
“I’m still searching his room,” Sean said.
“I know you are, Sean,” Emily said, exasperated. “I know.”
CHAPTER 6
The search of Ryan’s room had yielded nothing so far. Sean would have to leave the computer and Facebook investigation to his more technology-proficient wife. For now, he had only a few minutes before Emily and the boys returned from the store or whatever errand Emily had come up with to pacify Sean’s pathetic need to play detective. He leaned against Ryan’s doorframe, staring into the room. He tried to channel his inner teen. Where would he have hidden pot or booze or Playboys or something incriminating?
He turned and looked about the hallway, assessing the fingerprint smudges and dings and nicks, staple décor in any home with boys. He opened the hall linen closet. Just towels and toilet paper and clean sheets. He eyed the attic door on the ceiling. More finger smudges, near the latch. Hmm. He reached up and hooked his finger around the ringlet latch and pulled down. The hinged door opened, the springs creaking and groaning. The door had a ladder, a folded-up contraption, attached to it. He brushed away some spiderwebs and unfolded the ladder and climbed into the mouth of the attic.
It was dark and the air warm. Musty. Sean adjusted his eyes to the dark and found the switch. A single exposed bulb flickered on and Sean surveyed the boxes, old furniture, and rolled-up carpet remnants in the dim light.
He stood, careful not to hit his head against the triangle of the roof. A bump on the head could be fatal since the roof was not insulated; rusty nails that secured the exterior shingles poked through the wood. Another one of the joys of owning a historic home, and a reminder of how little a million dollars got you in an affluent D.C. suburb.
He walked carefully down the small pathway lined with junk. He really needed to clean the attic. He decided it would make a good punishment for Ryan’s latest debacle. He scouted about, not seeing any contraband. He spotted the small coffin-like boxes for Abby’s American Girl dolls. He remembered when she was about twelve and packed them up for storage and how a quadrant of his heart had disintegrated in his chest. Deciding the entire search was wrongheaded, he turned back toward the shaft of light coming from the hole in the floor.
Along the path, a dimpled old box caught his eye. Scrawled on its side in black Sharpie was the word JAPAN. He thought he’d long ago buried that box deep in the bowels of the attic. He crouched down and opened the box’s flaps. On top were a few Japanese comic books, some wooden nunchucks, and a throwing star, the types of precious cultural artifacts only a fourteen-year-old could fully appreciate. Under it all, a pile of vinyl albums. His collection from when he was a kid. He flipped through them. AC/DC, Quiet Riot, Van Halen, and some embarrassing ones, Night Ranger, Duran Duran. He pulled out one of his old favorites, Def Leppard’s Pyromania. The soundtrack of his youth. He wiped a hand across the cover, clearing away the dust.