“Even Dad?”

I couldn’t believe I’d said that word, but as all eyes looked my way, I couldn’t shrink now. I’d spoken. I had to own my words, though my hand trembled.

I tucked it under my leg.

“What’d you say?” Channing asked.

“You heard me. You want me to see Dad? Hear his words of wisdom?”

Channing’s eyes narrowed. “I recall asking you to go with me to visit him not too long ago, so yeah. Go and hear what he has to say.”

He started to turn away, his shoulders rigid and tight.

He was such a hypocrite. He hated him more than I did.

“Should we talk about that night? That’s what he’s going to say to me. He’s going to talk about his regrets.”

Channing’s back got even tighter. His shoulders seemed to stretch out, widening his shirt.

I waited. I wanted him to say something. I wanted to hear him acknowledge that night.

I laughed. “Don’t you want to hear a play-by-play of that night? I can tell you. I don’t need to go see Dad to remember.” Slowly I stood, though I kept my head down. I felt like I was talking to a sleeping cobra. I was wooing him, trying to engage him. It didn’t matter that the cobra was my brother.

No one talked about the night our dad was arrested. No one. I never had, and I knew Channing hadn’t. I didn’t even know if Channing knew what had happened. This was the first time I’d brought it up. And I was using it to needle him. I wanted to get at him. I wanted him to feel some of the pain I would have to suffer if we didn’t fight the mentoring program.

He looked back toward me as I stood waiting.

“Bren.”

He wanted me to let him off the hook. I wasn’t going to do that. I wanted that cobra to wake up. I didn’t care if I would get bitten. I might have welcomed it.

“Were you told what happened that night? Are you able to imagine it?”

“Don’t.” He drew in oxygen, then letting it out just as quickly.

So he did know. Maybe?

I began remembering myself, speaking the memories out loud. “She died. She was gone, and you were gone too. It was me and him in the house.”

Way too many fucking years, just him and me. Him. Me. His alcoholism.

“It was quiet when she was sick. Did you know that? It was eerily quiet. Then she died, and there was no sound. Not a peep. You were gone. He was gone. She was gone. It was just me, until…” I hated this. I hated peeling back the layers, the memories, the numbness. It was all being stripped away. “Then he started coming back. So did the booze. The partying.”

Channing’s jaw clenched.

He knew what that was like. It was why he’d left in the first place.

“His friends started coming around too.”

I would be in bed. I’d be trying to sleep.

I could hear their drunken laughter. They’d hoot. They’d holler. Their dirty jokes had them slapping hands. They sickened me. They sickened me now.

“That became the norm, Channing. Every night he brought friends home. He didn’t care who they were, just as long as the house wasn’t empty. He didn’t want to feel her like I did.”

Like I still did.

“Stop, Bren,” Channing rasped, but wouldn’t look at me.

He couldn’t. He would see what had happened to me.

“At first he stayed up while they were there. He was responsible, making sure no one found out about me. That didn’t last.”

He started falling asleep.

That night his latest group of “friends” had woken me up with their noise. But they always stayed downstairs, so I didn’t think too much of it. I’d just needed to go to the bathroom.

“I didn’t have toilet paper,” I said aloud.

If I had…

“I was going to use the bathroom in the hallway.”

Stupid toilet paper.

“Bren.” Channing’s eyes had shut tight. He didn’t want to hear this, but it was coming. It was time. Finally.

“Maybe I should’ve grabbed a robe. I don’t know. Maybe if I’d stayed in my room…” If I’d had toilet paper. If I hadn’t needed to use the bathroom outside of my room.

I felt her coming now. She wanted to protect me. She wanted to envelop me so I didn’t feel what I was about to say, but I pushed her off. I wanted to go numb, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t right, not this time. Not yet.

My throat was scraped raw. “The cops made note of what I was wearing that night,” I told him. “A sleeping tank top and boy shorts.”

Like it was my fault.

Like it mattered what I had been wearing.

I still felt their silent accusations. It had been in their eyes, the way they looked at me, as I sat there covered in blood.

I had to get to the bad parts. I couldn’t hold her off anymore. Inch by inch, I let her in, and I became so numb I couldn’t feel my lips.

“I was in the hallway, on my way back. The cops told me later that when I flushed the toilet, that’s how he knew someone was up there. He heard me.”

I had reached for my bedroom’s door handle. Three feet and I would’ve had the door locked. I would’ve been inside. I would’ve been safe.

“He came out of nowhere.”

I never saw him. I felt him.

There was a shadow on the stairs, and then his hand was on my mouth. He dragged me back into their room.

God. I clamped my eyes shut. What if it’d happened in their room? What then? What would’ve been the ending?

“Bren?” Someone had called my name.

He’d paused, just inside their bedroom, and he must have changed his mind.

“He was going to rape me in Mom and Dad’s room. Then he heard Dad, and he took me into my room instead.”

He’d shut the door and whispered in my ear, “You fucking tell him you’re fine and you’re going to bed, or I will kill you. You got that, cunt?”

“He shook me as he threatened me.”

Our dad had said that’s how he knew I was lying. I never told him I was fine. It was a lie.

I didn’t lie.

“I said what he told me to. I recited it word for word.”

But I’d known what was by my bed, what I could grab.

“He said he was going to kill me.” Even now, anger swelled inside me. I felt it pushing at the numbness.

“He waited until Dad bought my lie and we heard him leave.”

I’d heard one agonizing footstep on the floor after another until they faded. I’d felt my humanity going with him.

“He threw me on the bed. He started ripping my clothes off. He was in a hurry. He fumbled for his condom—so thoughtful of him, right?”

I’d known where my knife was.

He’d gotten distracted for a second, and I reached for it, under the mattress.

“I stabbed him. I thrust that knife in as far as I could, as hard as I could—just like he wanted to rip inside me.”

He’d knocked my hand away, but I fought him. I rolled too, punching his dick as hard as I could. As he doubled over to the floor, I was on him.

“I grabbed my knife and pulled it out.”

I’d raised it above my head, straddling that asshole.

“Then Dad took it from me.”

It had been time for his crime.

“I wanted to do it.”

He’d taken the knife from me, and with a gentle hand, he’d ushered me to the side. He’d told me to leave.

“He tried to get me to leave. But I knew what he was going to do.” I could feel tears in my eyes. I hated them. They were weakness. “He cut his throat, and I watched from the door.”

He’d killed him so I wouldn’t.

I waited a beat, then asked Channing, “Still think I’d benefit from hearing how I should be in prison and not him?”

My father went to prison for a crime I should’ve committed.

The silence was thick.

Weak. Vulnerable. Exposed. I was all three of those, and I hated it.

I reached for my knife, and as soon as I felt it, everything off balance centered again.

“Were you going to kill him?” Channing asked.

I’d expected the question from Cross, so I looked over. He already knew.

I turned to my brother. “Yes.”

He nodded once. He didn’t say anything, but I caught a darkness in my brother, one that I saw in the mirror, one that scared me to my core at times.