“You want to tell me where you’ve been?”
“At the prison,” I say, trying not to think about how long it’s been since Dad held me.
“You want to tell me where else you’ve been?”
I turn my face into his faded chambray shirt to muffle my voice. “No.”
“Brooklyn Grace.”
I can feel the rumble of my name in his chest. He hasn’t let me go, not one inch, but he will if I don’t answer. “I didn’t feel up to driving after, so I sat in the prison parking lot for a good while.” If my face weren’t pressed up against his chest, I’d have missed the sharp inhalation he made. As it is, I feel it like it’s the closest thing to a broken heart another person can feel.
“You can’t be doing this again. Not to your mom. Not to me.”
I nod against his chest and I feel his hand come to rest on my head before he finally releases me.
“Let me see your phone.”
I’m still holding it from when I showed Mom, so I just have to lift my arm. His work-scarred, calloused hands, so much larger and capable than mine, carefully take the phone. He raises it beyond where my still lowered eyes can see.
“Looks broken.”
“Yes, sir.” If his next question is to ask me whether I intentionally broke it myself, my answer will be the same.
“I’ll get you a new screen and we’ll see if that fixes it.”
My eyes lift slowly, until I meet his, the same rich brown as Laura’s.
His free hand rises partway, hesitates and then moves the rest of the way to gently brush my throbbing cheek with his thumb. “She shouldn’t have hit you.”
My chin trembles. “She was worried,” I say. “About Jason. And me.”
Dad shakes his head once. “No excuse.”
Maybe not, but I still understand why she did it. I knew that from the second I walked out of the house to the second I came back, she wouldn’t be able to think of anything else besides me and Jason and the fact that she wasn’t with us. It would eat at her even while she took care of Laura. She’d probably held the phone in her hands for a long time before she gave in and called me, and then blind panic would have set in shortly after the first missed call, escalating beyond anything Dad or Laura could calm.
There were a million things I could have done to make sure this didn’t happen, even if my phone had really been broken the whole time instead of for just the last few minutes. I could have come straight home or stopped anywhere along the way and called. Dad isn’t saying it, because my face is bright red from Mom’s hand, but he knows same as I do.
Dad’s hand returns to his side. “Come on.”
I follow him to the kitchen and lean against the island while he gets me a bag of frozen peas from the freezer. The first touch of cold on my overheated cheek makes me pull the bag away, but Dad gently presses my hand to rest it against my face again.
“Your brother all right?”
I hesitate, startled more by the question than the shock of frozen peas. I know he and Mom talk about Jason together, but never with me or Laura. I know it’s hard for him, and yet, I can’t begin to fathom what it must be like to watch your firstborn child be arrested, ultimately confess to something so unimaginably horrible and then know you might not live long enough to see that child released from prison. The guilt and grief and anger and helplessness must be overwhelming. On top of that he now has to watch Laura pull away from life more and more each day while Mom’s forced smile grows equally more fragile. It might be easier to shut Jason out of his heart too, and all this time I thought he had.
It’s such a small question, four little words,Your brother all right?But I don’t miss the way Dad holds his breath waiting for me to answer.
I nod, and with a breath, so does Dad.
“Will you tell her? Not now but—”
“I’ll tell her,” I say, lowering the peas to the counter, but Dad stops me before I can turn toward the stairs with his hand over mine and eyes my cheek. It feels hot, which I know means it’s still red. Mom will be feeling horrible enough without having to see the evidence of her slapping me. I bring the peas back to my cheek. “Tomorrow,” I say. “I’ll tell her tomorrow.”
He nods, his eyes resting on the frozen peas before smiling. “I remember this.” His smile grows. “Frozen vegetables on your knees or your ankles. You used to go on when you fell skating. Never saw such a little thing cry so much. But you never did want to quit, did you?”
“No, I never did,” I say, wanting to smile and cry at the memories of me and Dad driving home from practice with ice packs or frozen whatever-was-closest-to-checkout-at-the-first-store-he-spotted-on-the-way-home vegetables. He’d let me cry the whole drive if I wanted to, but he always had me stop before Mom saw me, saying that mommas don’t like seeing their babies cry. It hurts their hearts in a way they can’t ever forget.
“I miss seeing you skate,” he says when I lower the frozen peas from my face. “Loveliest thing I ever saw was you on that ice.”
