Ben tapped his fork to the plate. "He does not. Hell, Angie, don't go looking for metaphysical explanations. It's simple. The boy is growing up." ill know he is."

"Then stop smothering him."

She was taken aback. "I'm not smothering him."

"Sure you are. You watch him all the time."

"That's not smothering. That's mothering."

He set down his fork and sent her a look that was almost as foreign as Dougie's had been.

"It was mothering when the boy was four, seven, even ten. But he's fourteen, and you're still right there telling him what to do. You lay his clothes out at night, you proofread his homework, you keep track of his phone calls." ills that wrong?" she asked in astonishment.

"Should I just stand back and let him talk on the phone all night to whomever he wants? If he did that, he'd never do any homework. What would happen then?"

"He might fail a test or two, but at least he'd learn what happens when he doesn't do his homework. At some point, the initiative has to come from him. At some point, he has to develop his own sense of responsibility. But you won't let him near that point. You're smothering him, Angie. Clear as day, you are." l am not. Angie thoueht. She didn't understand what was happening.

Ben never criticized her.

He was always happy with what she did. ills it Mara?" ills what Mara?"

"This" She gestured.

"For God's sake, no. Why do you keep saying that?"

"Because I don't understand what else it could be," she reasoned. "The death of a friend is so upsetting that you begin to find fault with things that would otherwise be just fine."

Ben scowled at the remains of his dinner. In his silence Angie felt a wave of relief. She was right, after all. Mara's death had set them all on edge. Things would be fine once the ache of the loss eased.

Then Ben raised his eyes. His gaze was direct, his voice tight.

"Mara's death may be the catalyst, nnay be the thing that's made us more sensitive and therefore more apt to speak out, but I meant what I said before. This has been building. It was only a matter of time before it came to a head. The fact is that you're smothering Doug.

He's fourteen and needs to be meeting his friends at the local video store on a Friday night. Teenagers do things like that."

"Some do, some don't."

"Well, Doug wanted to, and given that he stood there with us through Mara's funeral and that nightmare of a lunch afterward, he could have used the release."

"I suggested that he play basketball."

"With me, but I'm his father. It's not the same. He needs to be with his friends more than you're allowing him to be."

There it was, another startling slap on the wrist. ill don't understand, Ben. Why the sudden criticism? You've always agreed with me before."

"No," he said slowly. There was an ominous pause. "I've always gone along. That doesn't necessarily mean I agreed."

She felt a flash of anger. "Why didn't you speak up?n He seemed to grapple with the question himself, rising from the table, crossing to the sink, and staring out the window, finally wheeling around.

"Because you were always in such control, damn it. From the time Dougie was a baby, you had all the answers." He threw up a hand.

"Hell, it goes back before that.

You've had all the answers since the day I met you. Fvight from the start, you knew you wanted to be a wife, a mother, and a doctor.

You picked me out at the start of your senior year so that we could be married the minute you graduated" "Whoa," she protested. "You make it sound like a cold, calculated act, but you were the one who asked me out, not the other way around, and you kept asking me out. I was legitimately in love by the time you asked me to marry you."

"And it worked out well, didn't it? You graduated in time to be married, honeymooned in time to start medical school, finished medical school and your residency in time to have a baby, got him out of diapers and into school in time to move up here and start practicing with Paige. You orchestrated it all, Angie, and the amazing thing is that it worked. You're a remarkably capable woman. You plot things out, and they're done, and you rarely allow for help. I'd have been a more active father when Dougie was little if I had felt I was needed, but you had everything done before I could do much more than offer."

ill was making things easier for you," she argued. "You had a career.

You had deadlines to meet. You were supporting us at the time.

It was my job to take care of Dougie."

"Even after you went back to work? Okay, he was in school by then.

Still, I might have done something. I'm here during the day. I drive.

I love the kid, too. But you arranged your schedule so that you could drop him at school on the way to work and pick him up on the way home, and spend weekends and vacations with him."

"We did wonderful things on weekends and vacations," she reminded him.

There had been road trips, and airplane trips, and trips to Boston to visit historic sights and museums.

"That's not the point," Ben insisted. "The point is that you personally planned and executed Dougie's childhood. You didn't need my help. After a while, I didn't bother to offer. The message that I was superfluous came through loud and clear. I just sat back and watched, which is pretty much what I've been doing for years."

Angie swallowed. He kept hitting, kept hitting. She was totally confused. "Was I doing it wrong?"

"No. You were doing it right. You were always doing it right. Wife, mother, and doctoryou got everything done when it was supposed to be done, even if it meant that you were programmed from morning to night.

But things are changing now. Dougie isn't a baby anymore.

You can't program his life the way you have up until now. He's growing. He needs space." ill give him space."

"Not nearly enough. You tell him what to do when, and why. You don't let him make decisions for himself."

"I'm helping Life is difficult."

"You emasculate him, Angie."

"How can I do that? He isn't a man yet."

"And he'll never get there, if you keep on the way you're going. You deny him things that would make him feel good about himself. Sure, he's self-confident now, but after a while, when he begins to feel that he can't make decisions on his own because you've always made them for him, he'll be in trouble.

You're taking away his sense of power. You're making him feel impotent, and that's devastating. I know. You've been doing it to me for years."

She sucked in a breath. "Not true."