Lynch

Alice watched her husband watching her son. The boy, fourteen years old, his face still smooth but his feet and hands enormous, was jumping from rock to rock on Galway Bay shouting threats and curses. Meanwhile, Neil stood by, hands in his pockets, shoulders rigid, lower back relaxed, the posture of a successful man keeping his value under wraps. They’d come to Ireland as a family, but Lee was staying on indefinitely and they’d be leaving without him, a childless couple on their own.

If she could only disengage, Neil told her, she’d realize this was the best setup for everyone. The Crosswinds Academy, with its international reputation and strict discipline code, was perfect for Lee, and even if it wasn’t, it was sure better than prison. Neil’s new business would mean he’d be returning to check up on the boy from time to time. And Alice was always welcome to tag along. But for her, this parting was the ultimate evil, the forced separation she’d been dreading ever since Lee was born. She stood on the beach immobilized, amygdala overactive, imagination raw and enlarged.

She’d been trained, she supposed, by raising a difficult child, a boy who threw tantrums over the fit of his clothes, the slightest disruption in his daily schedule, or the sound of the girl breathing on the mat next to him in pre-school. Once, Alice had tried a shoe on him and he began screaming so loudly that a clerk rushed from the store across the mall to reprimand her for child abuse. Another time, she had to bring him to kindergarten half-dressed because he wouldn’t stand for the touch of clothes on his skin. When he was as old as eight, he cried through an afternoon of sightseeing on Lake Shore Drive, refusing to wear or even carry his coat in spite of the frigid December temperatures and the wind off the lake.

But as he grew older, Lee found ways to soothe himself, tossing a ball up and down, keeping a hand exerciser in his pocket, pulling repeatedly on the one lank patch of hair in his head of loose auburn curls. Of course, video games were a salvation. Once he transitioned to the screen, Lee could still his body for hours at a time. And in this way, Alice was able to tend to her own occupations, sometimes finishing a novel or a home improvement project before he looked up to ask her to make him a sandwich or drive him to the mall.

But now Lee was back to his old behavior and Neil insisted on taking charge. So Alice turned and walked down the beach, scanning the gray waves for fishing boats or any distraction, really, from the argument in progress. She knew, with a deep muscular pang of conscience, that Lee got his sensitivity from her. Certainly, it didn’t come from Neil, who could sleep through an attack of rage or colic, eat the worst greasy street food without digestive complaint, or answer an afternoon’s worth of e-mails while holding up his end of an argument.

Lee had been alert from the day he was born, staring wide-eyed at whatever she set in front of him. She once believed this was a sign of genius and bought lavish picture books to prop up between the bars of his crib so he would never lack for stimulation. But now she suspected her son’s fierce attention was only a symptom of his ailment—a condition diagnosed as Asperger’s by one therapist and general anxiety by another. Whatever its cause, the aura of distress followed Lee everywhere like some predator waiting to spring.

She heard a bird call and felt her heart jog in her chest. Looking up, she saw a gull drop an oyster onto the rocks, where the shell cracked open to reveal the glistening creature within. Then the bird plunged down and plucked the meat out with a single motion. She’d read about this phenomenon many times, but never seen it...