Page 59 of Hostile

My father arrived Tuesday morning with the family attorney and booked a suite at a hotel by the river.

He did not raise his voice. I had never once heard my father raise his voice, and he didn’t break that streak during the worst week of my life. He asked for my phone, and I gave it to him. He and the attorney sat at a polished table, scrolling through the record—just one message, sent Sunday at 11:47 p.m., to sixty-one of my contacts—while I stood at the window like a man awaiting a biopsy.

“I didn’t send it,” I said. “I’ve never seen that video. I didn’t know it existed.”

My father stared at the phone for a long time. Then he looked at me as if he were reading a structural report on a building he owned.

“The message came from this device,” the attorney said. “That is the fact we have to work with.”

“Then someone had my phone.”

“Who?”

I didn’t have an answer. I’d spent Sunday evening the same way I’d spent a hundred Sunday evenings—I dropped Megan at her dorm, texted her from the car, and stopped by Blair’s apartment because she’d asked me to pick up a box our mother had shipped north. I had a glass of water at her counter. My phone sat charging by the sink while Blair talked to me about the summer, our parents, and nothing. Billy Brown was somewhere in the back of that apartment the whole time. I found that out later. That night, all I registered was the bathroom door staying closed and Blair refilling my glass.

Rebuilding the memory now feels like watching security footage of a robbery. Every minute of that visit was crucial. I can never decide which detail is more troubling: that she used a box from our mother as an excuse, or that she kept me talking just long enough to cover that time.

The university opened a conduct file. The police opened a real one. For six days, I was the suspect—I want that fact preserved, too. For six days, the official version of events was that I had done it, and I could not entirely blame that version. By Wednesday, my father pulled me out of my classes pending resolution, which suited everyone, including me. I could no longer sit in rooms.

Saturday, I drove to the Cape alone.

The house was shut up for the season on both floors, the furniture under sheets, the pool covered, the whole place holding its breath the way empty houses do. I stood in my bedroom doorway for a full minute before I could enter. Then I took the room apart. I don’t know exactly what I was looking for—proof, an explanation, some object that would make it make sense—but I didn’t find it for two hours because I was looking for something hidden, and it wasn’t. It was sitting in the media cabinet, between the slats of the vent, a lens the size of a shirt button, patient as furniture.

Facing the bed.

I sat down on the floor of that room and did not move for a long time.

Then I drove it to my father’s hotel in a zip-top bag, like evidence. Because that is what it was.

The police traced the purchase within a week. Billy Brown. Paid for online, shipped to campus, carried into my family’s house in a weekend bag.

My father knew a full day before I did. I have never asked him why he sat on it because I already know the answer. He was deciding what could be contained, and his son’s reaction was on the list of things that couldn’t be. He was right. The morning the police went to pick Billy up at school, Billy had already run home. I knew where home was.

I got there before they did.

I’m not going to sugarcoat what happened on that lawn, but I will say I’d do it all again. I regret nothing about it.

I hit him before he finished saying her name.

The first punch caught him in the mouth and snapped his head back. He stumbled, got one hand up, and I hit him again. My knuckles split against his teeth. Blood sprayed across his chin and onto the front of his shirt.

He tried to swing at me. I don't remember whether he connected.

I remember putting him on the ground.

I remember him curling an arm over his face and me dragging it away because I wanted him to look at me. I remember the wet crack when my fist caught his nose and the sudden rush of blood that followed. I remember hitting him in the ribs when he rolled away, then hauling him back by his shirt when he tried to crawl toward the porch.

Mostly, I remember Megan.

Megan alone in that hallway.

Megan’s face when she ran away.

Megan carrying the brunt of that video while he went home every night and slept just fine.

So I kept hitting him.

His nose broke. One eye swelled shut. His lip split so badly that his teeth were red when he opened his mouth. At some point, he stopped fighting back. At some point, he started begging me to stop.