He can hear Father inside, yammering away about the nature of death in what Jason's sure his father considers a deep and poignant speech but what sounds to everyone else as eloquent and sober as a belch. Jason picks up a bigger rock and throws it at one of the pigeons, missing but sending the bird skittering away with that back-and-forth bob that birds have.

Jason's never liked his family, but in the last few months he's come to learn what it's like to be embarrassed of them. Not just of Benjamin, wall-eyed and loud and stupid, but of the name, not of a garish decorating choice but of the whole house.

He throws another rock and one of the birds flaps a few feet towards Swann, and when Jason's eyes follow it, they meet hers. Suddenly he feels flooded with shame, not of his action but of everything around them, as if the new suit and the orchestra in the background and the dim sounds of his father's pontificating are conspiring to make him tiny and weak, crushed like trash in a compressor, and Swann's eyes are the last piece.

"You're getting too old to play with dolls."