We drove in silence for three blocks.
“He’s sober, Mom,” Sam said finally. “Fourteen months. He has a chip. He showed me.”
“I’ve seen chips before, Sam. Your father has a whole drawer of chips. He had a ninety-day chip the night he forgot you at this rink when you were eight. Did he tell you about that?”
Sam didn’t say anything.
“Did he tell you that? That you sat on the bench outside the main entrance in your gear for two hours in February because he was at the Shamrock with his friends and lost track of the time? That the night manager called me at work because you were crying and you wouldn’t tell her your phone number because you were scared you’d get your dad in trouble?”
“I remember,” Sam said. His voice was very small.
That stopped me. I hadn’t known he remembered. He had been eight. He had never once brought it up.
