The Red Parts

brought him into the lobby, signed him in, and together we waited for a turn with one of the counselors. He sat in a cheap black plastic chair, staring catatonically at the institutional blue walls. An hour passed. He began to fidget. Two hours passed. His brow furrowed; his face clouded. Three hours passed. The tears started. Four hours passed. He

In 1944, Bowlby published the very first paper on family therapy, Forty-four Juvenile Thieves, in which he noted that “behind the mask of indifference is bottomless misery and behind apparent callousness, despair.” Bowlby’s young charges were frozen in the attitude “I will never be hurt again” and paralyzed in desperation and rage.

Me and Steve, we went at McCann by ripping away what he believed most about his life, blowing it up in front of his eyes, and hoping there’d be too little of him left to hold out against us. Just like Aislinn had been planning. But when we took as much of McCann as we could, shredded him into the last thing he ever wanted to be, we left him with No

I can’t imagine it had anything to do with me. That’s the biggest lie of all. Of course this has to do with me. What I don’t know is what message the body in my driveway was meant to convey. Is it to terrify me? Or is it a gift, the same way a cat brings you a dead mouse? A way to tell me: We took care of your little problem. You’re welcome. I have