The Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill.

Age Nine

Here's how it ended:

"Punch him hard or it doesn't count," says Christian.

Grant squints and looks carefully, memorizes where everybody is, so he can shut his eyes and still aim as long as Thomas doesn't move.

Thomas doesn't move, but he whimpers and cries when Grant's fist connects with his gut.

Here's how it began:

It began with a very good day, as far as Grant was concerned. Mother had locked Christian in the back part of the basement, past the wine cellar and into the unfurnished part that had steel reinforcements and no windows. Grant wasn't sure what – if anything – Christian had done to merit his confinement and he didn't particularly care. He knew from experience that Mother would leave Christian down there for hours, sometimes days.

Which really sucked for Christian – there was no question about that – but it was a nice reprieve for Grant, who was working on a Lego model of the space shuttle, complete with earthside launch command while tolerating stupid questions from his younger brother.

"But how come my pennies aren't a collection?" asked Thomas, idly putting two random Legos together before taking them back apart.

"You don't have a collection," said Grant impatiently. "Collections are for things like books and seashells and stuff."

"And pennies."

"Not pennies. You can't collect money. Well, you can, but it's not a collection. It's just your bank account."

Thomas sighed and untied his shoe so he could practice tying it again. Grant had offered to teach him to tie sailing knots once he got the hang of shoelaces.

They both heard a thumping in the walls. They exchanged glances. Mother wasn't really nice to anyone, but she was worst to Christian. There was a time, years ago, maybe before Thomas was born, when Grant and Christian were sometimes on the same team, allies against their parents. Now, it was every man for himself on good days and on bad days…

Grant hopped down off of his bed and picked up the cordless phone. Maybe he could talk Gramsy into inviting him over for a visit. He dialed the number by memory and tried to think of a good reason while the phone rang. No answer. More thumping.

Whatever Christian was doing, he eventually gave up because the noise died down.

Grant put it out of his mind and focused his attention on his Legos, specifically on prying apart the flat pieces that Thomas had stuck together. He let his guard down, which he should have known better than to do, because for all Grant enjoyed the times when Christian was kept away from him by Mother's punishments, they always ended with Christian in a predatory mood.

"Did you know-"

Grant was startled by the voice coming from his doorway.

"Did you know that we have mice in our basement?" asked Christian. He was holding a little grey mouse in his left hand, petting it gently with the right.

Thomas leaned in, curiously. "Can I pat it?"

"Oh sure," said Christian. He didn't sound like he was lying, but Grant knew that he was. He always was.

Thomas had just leaned forward to touch the soft fur when Christian's right hand shot out, grabbing him by the ear. Christian raised the mouse over Thomas's head. "Uh-huh," he said, "not yet."

"Let him go," said Grant, almost by reflex.

"Punch him," answered Christian, "punch him as hard as you can."

"I'm not going to beat him up," said Grant. "He's just a little kid." Grant hoped he sounded defiant, but he probably just sounded weary.

"If you don't," said Christian, "I'm going to kill this mouse."

The Sixth Commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Age Twelve

Grant actually liked his weekly time with Dr. Wolk. She didn't try to trick him. She took him seriously. She let him have his secrets.

"I'm not sad about it," said Grant. "I'm just pissed off."

"Who are you pissed at?"

"I don't know. The doctors? I mean, a stroke is a thing, right? It's a little tiny thing in your brain that kills you. Why can't they fix that?"

"Sometimes they can," said Dr. Wolk. "In your grandmother's case, they weren't able to do so quickly enough."

"They're smart. They've got tons of money. They should figure something out."

"You really want them to take responsibility for their failure," guessed Dr. Wolk.

"Yeah!" said Grant, but as soon as he said it, he knew it didn't sound right. "No, she was mostly dead before she even got to the hospital."

"Hmm."

"I guess…I guess I'm not mad at the doctors. I'm just mad."

"Grant, can I make an observation?"

The boy shrugged. She didn't really need his permission.

"I've known you for over a year now and we've seen each other many times. We've talked about a lot of different things. But the only feeling you've ever said you have is anger. You've never mentioned feeling happy or sad or frightened or anything other than mad."

"Is annoyed a kind of mad?"

Dr. Wolk nodded.

"Then, I guess I'm just mad all the time."

"That's possible, certainly. I think you have a lot to be mad about." Grant always froze inside when Dr. Wolk said things like that; it made him wonder if he had let on to any family secrets. "But there are other possibilities." She tapped her long fingernails on the armrest of her chair. "I'd like you to think back two weeks ago, before your grandmother's death." She knew better than to delve into fresh grief with a hypermasculine, closed-off preteen. "I want you to think of the last time you were angry." She flipped back in her notes. "The last thing we talked about…you saw your father kissing a woman who was not your mother and you said you felt furious."

Grant nodded. That was the sort of secret that Dr. Wolk could keep, and therefore the sort of secret he could tell her. He had gone to his father's office – his local office, not his D.C. one – to get a signature on his school permission slip. There had been no one at the secretary's desk, so he'd let himself into the back to find…well, it wasn't exactly wrong to call it kissing, in the sense that someone's lips were on someone else's body. He'd slipped away before anyone had noticed him.

"Are you picturing that moment, Grant?"

"Yes."

"Think carefully, and tell me how you felt."

"Angry."

"That name of an emotion is a summary of lots of different physical sensations and thoughts. Tell me exactly how you felt."

Grant was silent for several moments. "My face and arms and legs felt like sunburn, but my hands were sweating. My stomach felt heavy and squeezed. Is that what you mean?"

"Yes. Did you feel anything else?"

Grant considered her question carefully. "You know how you can touch your wrist to take your pulse, but other times you can just feel your heart beating without touching at all? It was like that."

The physical sensations the boy was describing were not incompatible with anger, but they sounded more like fear or dread. "And what were you thinking?"

"I wasn't thinking anything."

"You must have had some kind of thought."

"I was…I guess I was just thinking that if he got caught, something terrible would happen."