Ten

Pam

What do you do when you come home and find out your little boy just shot your neighbor’s son in the face, and there are cops in your house, and now someone else has been shot, and it might have even your son? How do you respond to that?

Keep in mind, I didn’t even know anything about Bridget yet. Dan had neglected to tell me that one. Sure, obviously I knew what Billy had done to me, but, as far as I was concerned, that was an accident. I had no reason to believe he was on some kind of spree. And believe you me if I did, you can bet I would have gotten home from the library a lot sooner than I did. Dan, of course, likes to blame me for my absence, but that’s just more of his posturing. Truth is, no matter where I was, I was looking out for my little boy. I might have had my eye off of him at the present moment, but that’s only because I was looking out for his future—out of pure instinct.

So here I am, getting out of my car, lugging a stack of books piled up to my chin, and my girlfriend Shelia grabs my arm.

“Don’t go in there,” she says. “The police are in there with your husband . . . and Billy.”

I looked behind her and I saw her son--whose name I think we’re still not allowed to say for legal reasons--I saw him sitting on the curb with his father holding a towel against the side of his face.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Billy shot him,” Shelia answered. “The bullet went right in his mouth. Then we heard another shot from inside the house . . .”

“What?” I dropped my textbooks all over the driveway.

“It’s OK, Mrs. Cullers,” the little boy said. “It doesn’t even hurt that much anymore.”

“Yes, but we’re still going to the hospital, young man,” Shelia said.

And now maybe this is the difference between me and Dan, but even after seeing this little boy who was shot in the face and feeling just as keen as I was after being shot, I wasn’t thinking of any kind of connection. I was just thinking about my little boy. Thinking that he was probably scared and didn’t know what to do. Thinking that he probably needed his mother.

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