So I can’t tell him what he wants.
And he won’t tell me what I need.
And I know I’ll dream about the murder that night, just as I know I’ll wake up heaving from sobs I can’t sound.
Uncle Mike isn’t there waiting to cheer us up when Mom and I get home. I’m already in bed for the night when I hear his voice mingling with Dad’s downstairs, and even though it’s been months and months, I can tell he’s drunk. He would never again drive drunk, which means he brought a bottle with him and probably drank half of it before coming inside. He’s not falling-down, pass-out-in-his-own-puke drunk—he has hasn’t done that since Jason first went to prison—but he’s drunk enough that he’s saying things he never would sober.
He and Dad get into it, only it’s the kind of fighting where they both maintain enough self-awareness to keep their voices down. Not that it matters. From up in my room I can hear their low yelling. When I slip into the hall I find Laura in her nightshirt clutching the banister at the top of the stairs. I don’t say anything, and I’m careful to avoid the floorboard that creaks when I walk up beside her.
“Where’s Mom?” I whisper, knowing she wouldn’t be silent if she were downstairs with Dad and Uncle Mike.
“Running.”
It’s after ten and black as pitch outside, and she’s running. I push that thought away.
“Then explain it to me!” Uncle Mike says, and there’s a thud like something toppled over. “’Cause from where I’m standing—”
“Barely standing. You want Carol to see you like this?”
“I want Carol to see me however I can. I want—I want—”
“Mike, what are you doing?” Dad asks, the volume of his voice giving way to weariness.
“I’m trying to talk to you.” Another thud followed by a muffled curse.
“Would you sit down before you break something I can’t fix?” Shuffled footsteps and a grunt.
“Get your hands off me. I’m standing.”
“Fine,” Dad says. “You’re standing. So talk.”
“You need to go see Jason.”
Beside me, Laura drops her hands from the banister and backs away from the stairs.
“Where are you going?” I mouth since it’s fallen quiet downstairs and I don’t want to risk a whisper. Laura doesn’t risk even that much. She just shakes her head and hurries back to her room.
“That’s not your business,” Dad says, drawing my attention back downstairs.
“The hell it’s not. I love him like he’s mine and—”
“But he’s not yours. None of my kids are yours, and neither is she.”
I feel the wordshehang ominously in the sudden silence. Now I’m the one clutching the banister. I’ve never heard Dad talk with Uncle Mike about Mom.
“If he were mine, I’d be there every week. I wouldn’t send my wife and my daughter off alone to make excuses for me.”
The floorboards downstairs shift, and I can imagine Dad drawing very close to Uncle Mike before he speaks. “I’m not going to see my son in that place.”
“Then you’re not going to see him! What if you don’t live another thirty years? How old was your dad when he died, sixty? Don’t you get it? You might not be here when he gets out, and you won’t know him anymore if you are!”
“I don’t know him now! How could he—” Dad cuts himself off before his voice can grow any more strangled. “I’m not having this conversation with you when you’re drunk.”
“What about your wife—you having this conversation with her?”
Dad’s voice drops so low I almost miss it. “Watch it, Mike.”
“Yeah, ’cause that’s what I do. I stand back, I watch, I can’t help and I never touch.”
