Sam and Connor stayed in the attic, which had been Ruby’s domain before she’d gone off to college, Connor spent most of his time on the third floor, where Dexter and Miles had their bedrooms. After three weeks, Connor asked Sam if he could have a sleepover in Miles’s room. Miles had bunk beds, and he’d generously offered his step-cousin the lower bunk. （“Sometimes I have nightmares,” Sam heard Connor explaining in his gravelly voice. “That’s okay,” Miles had answered, before lowering his own voice to a whisper and saying, “I used to wet the bed.”）
Sam watched over Connor carefully, worrying about the boy’s bad dreams, and his extremely limited diet. Connor had always been picky, but after Julie’s death, his selections narrowed to a tiny list of foods: chicken nuggets, carrot sticks, macaroni, peanut butter （never crunchy） on bread （always white）， grilled-cheese sandwiches, cheese sticks, and ice cream.
Sarah told Sam not to worry. The pediatrician said, “I promise you, he isn’t going to starve. Keep offering him fruits and vegetables, and just be patient with him.”
Sam did his best. He paid careful attention while his sister and brother-in-law gave him an introductory course in the parenting of little boys. Sarah took Sam to Old Navy and talked him through the bewildering particulars of kids’ clothing sizes. （“How is a 6 different from a 6T?” Sam asked, and Sarah leaned close and stage-whispered, “No one knows.”） Together, Sam and Connor picked out a new backpack, shaped like a stegosaurus, and a duvet cover with a dinosaur print. After his first day of camp, Connor joined his cousins for a playdate in Prospect Park, then, a week after that, an invitation to a classmate’s birthday party arrived. It seemed like Connor was making friends and settling into the rhythms of a new house. When Sam tentatively asked his sister if she knew of any children’s therapists, Sarah had smiled and said, “This is Park Slope. I bet I’d have an easier time telling you the kids who aren’t in therapy than the ones who are,” she said.
“Really?”
“Really. Personally, I think Connor’s doing fine.”
Sam sipped his coffee. “Sometimes I hear him crying in the bathtub,” he said.
Sarah made a face. “Sam. His mother died. Of course he’s going to sneak off and cry. And have bad dreams, and pitch a fit if you accidentally give him crunchy peanut butter.” She looked at her brother fondly. “I get that it’s probably hard to imagine what he’s going through. You and I had the most normal childhood in the world.”
“And I still did some crying in the bathtub,” said Sam, remembering being eight years old, when the older boys hadn’t let him join their ice hockey game, or twelve, when Missy LoPresto had broken up with him the day after agreeing to be his girlfriend because she’d decided she liked Craig Shepard better.
The therapist Sarah eventually found was named Ava Bidwell, and her office was just a few blocks from Connor’s camp, conveniently close to an ice-cream parlor. Sam and Connor would share a dish of vanilla with caramel sauce after Connor’s appointments on Wednesday afternoons, until that particular taste and texture became the taste of mental health. After they’d finished their treat, they would walk back to Sarah and Eli’s brownstone together, with Connor’s small hand secure in Sam’s larger one.
By the end of August, Dr. Bidwell pronounced Connor ready to face the world—“or at least try whole-wheat bread.” Sam brought Connor back to California. Maybe, someday, they would move East for good, but for now, he wanted to at least keep Connor in the neighborhood he knew and send him back to the school he’d attended before Julie had died.
He found a Craftsman bungalow with a guesthouse in the back, and he and Connor spent two eight-hour days at Ikea, where they bought a kitchen table and a couch and an entertainment unit and bunk beds like Dexter and Miles had. Sarah helped him equip the house, sending him links to furniture websites and places to buy rugs and towels and dishes and glasses and the thousand different things he’d need. Sam found Connor a new therapist, and got him signed up for a soccer team, and a kids’ cooking class that met on Saturday mornings. “Okay?” he asked, after he’d clicked the final buttons for enrollment.
“I guess,” Connor said. He turned away, then looked over his shoulder as he asked, almost casually, “Only can’t I just stay home with you?”
Sam scooped him up, deposited him on the dark-blue couch they’d picked out together, and sat down beside him. “I know that you’re scared.”