It took a minute to process. 'Okay, you get dressed. I'll make it.'

O.J. wasn't ready to do that yet. He stayed on the knee. 'But the way Mom does, okay?'

Glitsky took in a breath. 'Okay. How is that?'

'You don't have to yell at me. It's not that hard.'

'I'm not yelling. I'm whispering, in fact. And I didn't say it was hard. I'm sure it's not hard. I just want to know how you like it so I can make it that way, all right?'

'I said I didn't want one anyway.' The eyes were clouding up, threatening to spill over. 'Just forget it.'

Glitsky didn't let him pull away. 'I don't want to forget it, O.J. I want to get it right.' He had to keep from slipping into his cop voice. This was his son. He loved him. 'Tell me how Mom makes it,' he asked gently. 'Would you please do that for me, buddy?'

'It's easy.'

'I'm sure it is. Just tell me, okay.'

A pause, considering. O.J. stood, off the knee, and Glitsky straightened up. 'Bread, then butter – you never put butter, but Mom always does. You got to put butter first – then peanut butter, over the butter. Then, on the other bread, the jelly.'

'Butter, then peanut butter, then jelly. I got it.'

'On the other piece of bread.'

'I got it. But don't you close the sandwich when you're done, so that the peanut butter and the jelly are stuck together anyway?'

'But that's not how you make it. I could tell yesterday.'

'But yesterday I didn't put on the butter first.'

'Nope.'

'Nope what?'

'Also you put the jelly straight on the peanut butter.'

'I probably did, you're right.'

Glitsky couldn't believe he was having this conversation. His world was coming apart, as was his son's, and here they were discussing a completely undetectable difference in the placement of jelly on a sandwich.

But he had no strength to tell O.J. this was stupid. Maybe it wasn't stupid. Certainly it wasn't anymore stupid than all this talking about it. Perhaps it was O.J.'s cry for order as his universe devolved into chaos – jelly on the bread, not on the peanut butter.