“And?” she nudges me.
I shrug.
“Is there anything else you want to share?”
A shake of my head.
“C’mon, Jericho.” She rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms. “You gotta give me something else.”
I stare at the table, weighing how much to reveal. The old habits of silence, of protection, are hard to break. But I’m tired of carrying this alone.
“It stays here?” I point my index finger in the middle of the table between us and wait for her to nod before continuing. “It was my brother,” I finally say, my voice low. “Jethro.”
Cheryl’s expression doesn’t change, but she goes still, waiting.
“He was in a bad place. Drinking too much. Got into it with some guy at a bar who recognized him from his hockey days. Things escalated.” The memories flood back—the frantic phone call, finding Jethro standing over the man, blood on his knuckles, panic in his eyes. “By the time I got there, the damage was done.”
“So you… what? Confessed to it?” Her tone is carefully neutral.
“Told Jethro to leave. Waited for the cops.” I take another pull from my beer. “He had a career. A future. A daughter. I had nothing to lose.”
“Except your freedom.”
I shrug. “Four years seemed like a fair trade for his daughter’s life.”
Cheryl watches me, her cop eyes assessing. “Why didn’t you tell Nora this?”
“Would it have mattered?” The bitterness seeps into my voice. “In her eyes, I’m still the ex-con who beat a man half to death.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I saw her face, Cheryl.” The memory of Nora’s fear cutsfresh. “The way she looked at me… like I was suddenly someone else. Someone dangerous.” I rub the ache in the middle of my chest. “And that fucking hurt. She judged me right there, just like everyone else, without even listening.”
Cheryl sighs, leaning back. “You did fuck up when you didn’t tell her this little detail about yourself. But Nora… She has issues with violence. Because of our dad.”
“I know about her father.”
“Do you?” She tilts her head. “Did she tell you everything?”
The question makes me pause. “He was attacked. Died from complications.”
“That’s the short version.” Cheryl traces the rim of her glass with one finger. “The long one is that she was there with Grandma when our father was wheeled into the hospital.” She winces, probably recalling the time. “Nora never said anything, but Grandma said he was barely recognizable. The damage that was done to his face—” She pauses and throws the rest of the liquid in her glass into her mouth. “It was bad, Jericho. Really bad. And the story that Nora knows is that the man attacked our father for no reason. As a random act of pure violence. And our mom died in a car crash on the way to the hospital.”
“Is there another story?” I ask carefully, feeling my heart breaking for the girls.
She nods. “What Grandma and I never told Nora was that Dad wasn’t just some random victim. He had a temper. The night before he was attacked, he got into a bar fight himself. It went downhill from there for our family.”
I stare at her, processing this. “The man who attacked him…”
“Was connected to the fight the night before. Revenge, basically.” She meets my eyes directly. “Nora doesn’t know this. She’s built her whole life around avoiding violence, avoiding people who can’t control themselves. It’s why sheran from Boston after that mugging. Why she came back here.”
“Mugging?” I ask, confused. This is the first time I’m hearing about that.
Cheryl clicks her tongue. “Not mugging, but—” She cuts herself off and pinches the bridge of her nose. “It’s not my story to tell. I can’t.”
“Then why are you telling me all of this?”
She finds my eyes and holds them. “Because I don’t think you’re a violent man, Jericho. I think you’re a man who made a choice to protect someone he loves. And I think my sister deserves to know that.”
