"You're joking!" Elliott sat at the Barakat-Grimaldi's dinner table, forkful of shepherd's pie halfway to his mouth.

Todd Grimaldi shook his head, his own fork hovering in the air. "Unfortunately, it's their first brush with the law, hard as that is to believe," he said grimly.

"But what about Ruthie's recording?" Elliott asked, setting his fork down. "That's proof, corroboration or whatever, of what we say happened! And Gordon and Linda--"

Phil looked at Elliott with something close to sympathy before looking at his husband. They'd both gone through this too many times to count. Even Ruthie, having heard it that afternoon, wasn't as shocked or offended as Elliott now was.

"It doesn't matter," she said, taking. bite of her salad. "They're not contesting our version of events, that's what 'no contest' means." She chewed and swallowed before looking back at her dads. "Right? In exchange for the nolo contendere plea they get a better deal than they would've risked."

"So they get nothing?" Elliott finally just put down his fork and took a drink. "No punishment for assault, sexual assault, intent to cause grievous harm or whatever the fuck it's called?"

Ruthie knew that the subject at hand was so serious, and she should be focusing, but it was really hard when Elliott was sitting across from her, dark curls framing his narrow face, tickling his neck, large eyes flashing.

He was so hot.

"Not nothing," Pop said. "At least for Brett, because he's eighteen, it stays on his record, and they all have to do community service, give up their weekends? For those boys, that's serious, because it's the heart of football season, they're going to have miss practices, maybe even games.

Elliott's eyes, which Ruthie didn't think could get any bigger, did, eyelashes nearly touching his eyebrows, it seemed.

"Wait a minute, sir. Are you telling me they're still allowed to compete on a school team?" His voice was so high it made Clarence Darrow, who as usual was napping near the fire, lift his head. "Surely they're chucked, erm, expelled from the team?" He looked between Ruthie's fathers, and, finally, at Ruthie herself.

"That is up to the school," Ruthie's Pop said, his voice growing curt. "Some people think they should be cut, some do not." He took a huge swallow of his wine.

"They're suspended the week after Thanksgiving," Ruthie supplied.

"What? Nearly two weeks after the fact?" Elliott had by now given up all pretense of eating and was just looking from face to face.

"They didn't want to act until the legal stuff was 'sorted out,'" Ruthie explained, using air quotes. "Translate as 'They wanted to wait as long as possible, and give the boys the minimum amount of punishment, so as not to affect Warren High School's football season.

"And they won't get to make up the work they miss during that week, which will affect their grades a little," Ruthie went on. "Coach Kavanaugh is talking to all their teachers, especially the boys he wants for basketball and baseball in the spring, to try not to have it hurt their eligibility.

"Welcome to America, Elliott, I'm sorry," she finished, with a look filled with sympathy across the table.

After dinner, they went to her room, where Elliott paced back and forth. "This is making me crazy," he told Ruthie. Seeing those knobs all last week, walking around school like they'd done nothing wrong, jerking their heads at me whenever we'd run into each other like we were friends or like we shared some secret or something.

"And drama's the worst!" he continued, slapping his palm against the post of Ruthie's bed, making her jump. "Seeing Brett and his goon, that fucking Leroy, who hit you, who wanted to grope you? Said he'd dreamed about it for years?" Elliott's eyes were blazing as he raked his fingers through his hair. "I'd like to run him through with something sharp, and that fucking Carmichael as well!"

"No one said anything like that, El, you need to calm down," Ruthie implored. She took a deep breath and tried to think of a way to distract him. She saw her old sleeping bag, with the dark blue blanket folded on top, sitting next to her desk, and had an idea.

"Grab those blankets, my own Sir Lancelot, and follow me," she said, sliding her window open.

"What, outside? On your roof?" he asked doubtfully. He obediently grabbed the blankets and followed her, noticing that the blue one had a cord dangling from it.

"Okay, now be careful right here, don't step on the point of the gable--" Ruthie instructed. "Great! Now we just spread out the sleeping bag, and snuggle under the other one, see?" She flipped the switch, and the blanket began to get warm. Elliott put his arm around Ruthie, and she snuggled into his side as he tucked the blanket more snugly around them.

"See, the tree's lost enough leaves, especially on top, that you can see the sky and stars," Ruthie pointed out. "You can get up here by climbing Treebeard, too, in a pinch, just so you know."

"Treebeard?" Elliott repeated, knowing what was coming.

"This ash tree right here, he's Treebeard," Ruthie explained. "I named him for the tree in--"

I know what you named him for," Elliott laughed, cutting her off. "Tolkien was English, you know."

"So? So was Richard Adams, but you've never read him."

"Touché," Elliott answered, pulling her closer. "This is really nice, Ruthie, I like it here."

Ruthie was glad that the presence of the Lerner's boat hid the view of his grandparents' house, so he wouldn't know how clearly she could see into it.

They were quiet for a while, listening to the traffic from the freeway, the whistle of a train, and even the quiet honking noises made by a flock of geese as they flew overhead.

"El?" Ruthie's voice was cautious.

"Mm?"

"You feel like telling me about yourself? About before you came here, I mean."

He was quiet so long Ruthie thought she might have lost him.

He finally sighed, and Ruthie's body moved up and down in the cold night with this motion. They were warm, though, with the heat from the blanket making a nice counterpoint to the cold air on their faces.

"My mother was born here, in the house where I'm living now," he began, rubbing his thumb along Ruthie's shoulder.

"Kate, her name was. She was so beautiful, Ruthie, with piles of dark curly hair, big eyes--"

Like you, Ruthie kept herself from saying.

"And she was miserable here; I mean, how could she not be, with those two for parents? They're coarse, crass, uneducated, racist, homophobic--"

"But Elliott, she must have loved them a little. And surely they loved her?" Ruthie interjected.

He was quiet again. "Yeah," he said at last. "You're right, I'm being a bit of a bellend, I suppose. They have photographs of her everywhere, and talk about her all the time. They even have her room, did you know that?" He angled his head a little so he could look at Ruthie, who shook her head. "I mean, not preserved or anything, but all of her books and things are still there.

"Her presence in that house is what makes living there bearable, to be honest," he said, and Ruthie could hear the pain in his voice. "It's nice to see her picture, to be able to look at her old books and records, you know?"

Ruthie nodded.

"But anyway, she was not happy, and wanted to get out of Warren, out of a small town, maybe even out of California and America, I don't know. So she found a job as an au pair in London and left when she was eighteen.

She met my dad in the park in Kensington where she took the little baby she minded. He was a medical student home for the summer from Oxford, and he liked to take his dog, Roger, there. So they started meeting, fell in love, and got married."

Elliott's voice had gotten very low as he was carried away, and Ruthie even wondered if he remembered she was there.

"His family weren't in love with the idea, but they were nice about it. I kind of remember my gran and granddad. He always pulled coins out of my ear." Elliott laughed.

"These lot, though," Elliott, continued, jerking his head toward the Nicholsons' house. "You'd have thought she was going to marry into the Borgia family. They were furious, wanted her home, threatened to disown her, all that rubbish.

"She did it anyway," Elliott said with satisfaction. "She married my dad and said goodbye to all of this, became Mrs. William Banks.

"I think she was happy, too," he mused. I was born five years later, and as far as I can tell, they became even happier after I came along."

"I'm sure they did," Ruthie assured him. She wanted to cry, though she didn't know why.

"We were a happy family," Elliott said simply. "Mum and I would play in our garden, or in the park where they met, and dad would come home, and we'd eat, and talk and play some more, it was marvelous. She's the one who gave me the nickname ET.

"After I started middle school, mum went to work in a flower shop, not because we needed the money, but just because she liked flowers, like you," Elliott said, dropping a kiss on the crown of Ruthie's curly head.

"And dad and I noticed that she seemed tired, but we thought it was just from working at the shop. He spoke to her about it, but as she said, she'd rather be tired doing something she really loved, so we left it alone.

"By the time we found the cancer, it was too late," he said, his voice anguished. "She only had months left."

"How old were you?" Ruthie asked, hugging his arm to her and holding his other hand.

"Twelve," he responded.

"Oh god, Elliott, I'm so sorry," Ruthie said. Losing a parent at any age would be awful, but to lose one at twelve would be particularly painful.

"So she died, and we buried her on a beautiful summer day. The flowers she loved were blooming all over London, and I was glad for that, you know? For her to be resting among them seemed so right.

"So we went home, just the two of us, and tried to get on with life, or what passed for it.

"The thing of it was, Ruthie darling, I was prepared, you know?" His grip on her was getting painfully tight, but Ruthie didn't say anything, wanting him to continue. "I was ready to be there with him, to grieve with him, I was. I thought we would do it together, just me and my dad, together with our sorrow." Elliott shook his head.

"But we weren't. It was as though there were a wall between us. Dad started working really long hours, hardly coming home at all. I mean, I wasn't neglected or anything. He hired a housekeeper so I didn't come home to an empty house, I had meals, and he checked my homework and that, but he wasn't--there, anymore. He'd checked out, somehow, gone someplace without me.

"I was alone."

Ruthie wanted to weep.

"But then, just after the most miserable Christmas I've ever suffered through, Dad starts smiling again, whistling a little when he gets ready for work.

"So now I feel even more alone than before, because it's as though he's somehow gone through this dark place without me and entered some bright place, you understand?" He turned to look at Ruthie again. "I'm still over here, waiting to enter this horrible tunnel all by myself, and he's managed to go through it and come out the other side.

"Then one night he says he's going out for a bit, just a couple of hours, and after he's gone I realize he hasn't really told me where he's gone. And I look at his laptop and see he's looked up movie times and directions to a restaurant.

"He's gone on a fucking date. The cockwomble's gone out on a fucking date, can you believe it? With mum not eight months gone..."

And Ruthie could hear how his voice had regressed to a prepubescent version of Elliott; he had become a younger version of himself, and the sound sent chills up her spine.

"He gets happier and happier, and that summer, when mum's been gone about a year, he brings her to the house. To our fucking house! He wants us to meet, he says."

By now Elliott's grip on Ruthie's arm was vise-like, but again, Ruthie was silent.

Her name is Samairah, though she says I can call her 'Sam.' As if I would!" his voice was scornful. "She can't be more than twenty-five, she could almost be his daughter, I mean, couldn't he have a little self-respect?"

She tells me her parents are from India, but she was born in London. As if I couldn't tell, she's wearing a fucking dot on her head."

"A bindi," Ruthie corrected gently.

"Whatever the fuck they're called. So we had dinner together, and they're acting all normal and happy, you should've seen, I mean, it would've been enough to make you vomit. She called him Liam, like mum used to! No one else called him that! And he called her 'Sam.'" Ruthie could hear the derision in his voice.

"After the horrible dinner was over, he took her home, thank god, and I waited for him to come back so I could tell him I wasn't having it. But when he returned, it was to tell me that they were getting fucking married."

Ruthie could feel Elliott was shaking, and turned into him so she could hold him more firmly.

"Married! And mum not dead a fucking year! I mean, how could he? How could he do that to us?"

The disbelief and pain in Elliott's voice broke Ruthie's heart.

"So I realized my opinion didn't matter, and went up to my room. And when they got married in the back garden, I didn't go. It was a weird mixture of an Indian and English wedding, very bizarre."

"How do you know if you didn't go?" Ruthie asked.

"I watched some of it from my window," Elliott answered. "I needed to make sure they wouldn't trample mum's flowers.

"Life changed after that. She was always around, for one thing."

"Well, El, if they were married, that would be expected, right?" Ruthie said softly.

"She tried to make my lunches, help me with things, it was disgusting," Elliott said. "That's when he started shutting his door at night, as well."

Ruthie chose to change the subject.

"What did she do? Where did they meet?" Ruthie asked.

"She was a 'law student,'" Elliott said, his voice scathing. "Working part time as a clerk in the hospital to put herself through school. As if I'd believe that. The cunt was just a gold digger, looking for a wealthy older man."

"Did she continue her studies after her marriage?"

"What's that got to do with it?" Elliott asked. "So we go along like this for four years, with me doing theatre as much as I can, staying out of the house as much as possible. One thing about dad, he was certainly generous with his pocketbook. Classes, training, teachers, all that extra stuff, he paid so I could improve. He paid for the workshops that put me in touch with agents and casting directors, so that's one good thing the wanker did for me."

"So, earlier this year, Dad was crossing the street near the hospital, and was hit by a lorry and killed. Too bad the stupid cunt wasn't with him."

Ruthie was shocked by his tone, but let it go.

"So I figured that's that, and whatever, I'm going to LDAA, my life's set, I don't have to see Samairah ever again, so that's a nice thing, anyway.

"Then I find out that, with my dad gone, the Nicholsons are my legal guardians, and there's no money for LDAA anyway, because that bitch won't pay, and I have to come here for the year."

Elliott finally released her. "So, there you have it, the story of ET, warts and all," he said with an embarrassed laugh.

Ruthie didn't say anything, but merely lunged into his body, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding herself tightly to his body.

"I'm so sorry you've suffered so much, Elliott Banks," she whispered. "I hope I can take some of your pain away, okay?"

"You do, RBG," he assured her, putting his arms around her on the cool, dark rooftop. "More than you can imagine, you really do."