Chương 3
I looked at him once.
Blake stood beside our mother with a smear of purple frosting still on his cuff.
My father’s ring rested against the table.
The broken castle lay between them.
Then June squeezed my hand.
I walked out with my daughter and closed the door behind us.
The cold air outside hit June’s wet face, and she sucked in a breath through her teeth.
I crouched on the front walk and pulled the coat properly around her.
“Can you see okay out of that eye?”
She blinked several times.
“Yeah.”
“Any blurry spots?”
“No.”
“Dizzy?”
She shook her head.
The porch light washed the frosting in her hair into strange pale streaks.
For a second she looked much younger than ten.
Then the front door opened behind us.
My mother stepped outside.
She had her purse in one hand and June’s overnight bag in the other.
“Take this.”
I stood but did not reach for it.
Mom descended one step.
“Ethan.”
June moved closer to my side.
My mother noticed.
The movement hurt her.
I could tell because she stopped where she was.
“I packed the things she brought,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“And there’s some cash in the front pocket.”
“Take it out.”
“For the urgent care.”
“I said take it out.”
Her lips tightened.
“You’re being proud.”
“Probably.”
“Then stop.”
I finally took the bag from her.
The weight of it nearly pulled my shoulder lower because June had apparently packed half her bedroom.
Mom gave a faint, helpless laugh.
“She brought three stuffed animals for one night.”
June said nothing.
My mother looked toward the house.
“You know your father.”
I had heard those four words so many times they almost passed for a family prayer.
“No,” I said.
“I think I finally do.”
Her face changed.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn one bad night into something permanent.”
June’s fingers slipped into mine.
I looked at my mother and waited for her to look at the child beside me.
She did.
For maybe a second.
Then she looked back at me.
“Your father gets angry when he feels disrespected.”
“And June gets scared when a grown man shoves her into a table.”
“Blake did not mean to hurt her.”
“He meant to shove her.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It is to her.”
My mother swallowed.
The front door remained open behind her, spilling warm light across the porch.
Blake appeared in the hallway for a moment, saw us, and disappeared again.
Mom lowered her voice.
“If you leave like this, Walter will dig in.”
“I’m leaving because June asked me to.”
“You could give everybody ten minutes.”
“No.”
“Ethan.”
“No.”
The word came out harder than I intended.
June flinched.
I closed my eyes briefly.
When I opened them, I was tired all the way through.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
She nodded once.
Not forgiveness.
Acknowledgment.
“Call me when the doctor looks at her.”
I opened the passenger door of my truck.
June climbed inside.
My mother stood on the curb while I buckled her seat belt even though she had been doing it herself for years.
Before I shut the door, June leaned toward me.
“Grandma didn’t say sorry either.”
There was no accusation in her voice.
That made it worse.
“No,” I said.
“She didn’t.”
I closed the door.
My mother could not have heard.
Still, when I walked around the truck, she had started crying.
I drove away anyway.
At urgent care, a college basketball game played silently on a television above the waiting-room vending machines.
June sat with an ice pack wrapped in a towel against her cheek and filled out the children’s pain chart by circling the face labeled TWO.
“You can circle whatever one you actually feel.”
“I know.”
“You’re not trying to make me not worry?”
She looked at me.
“Maybe three.”
I smiled despite myself.
“Thank you for your honesty.”
She circled THREE.
The receptionist gave her a sticker shaped like a smiling bandage.
June studied it for several seconds.
“That’s kind of creepy.”
“It has eyes.”
“Bandages shouldn’t have eyes.”
“Strong position.”
She stuck it on my jacket.
For fifteen minutes, we sat shoulder to shoulder while a toddler threw crackers under three chairs and his exhausted father kept retrieving them.
Normal life continued around us with almost offensive efficiency.
A nurse called June’s name.
The cut did not need stitches.
The physician used adhesive strips, checked her vision, and told me what symptoms would require an emergency room.
He spoke gently to June and mostly ignored the frosting except to say, “That’s a pretty serious amount of cake.”
June almost smiled.
On the drive home she fell asleep.
At a red light, I looked over and saw dried lavender frosting behind her ear.
I remembered the first time Rebecca had fallen asleep in that same seat.
Different truck.
Same stubborn way of tucking one hand beneath her cheek.
My phone had accumulated nine missed calls.
Four from my mother.
Two from Mara.
One from an unknown number that I suspected was my aunt.
Two from my father.
There was also a text from Blake.
You seriously need to get a grip.
I deleted it at the next light.
Then I blocked his number.
I did not block my parents.
Not yet.
Our apartment was on the second floor of a building where the hallway always smelled faintly of someone else’s cooking.
That night it was onions and cumin.
I carried June upstairs because waking her felt cruel.
She woke anyway when I bumped her knee against the doorframe.
“Ow.”
“Sorry.”
“You’re bad at carrying people.”
“I haven’t practiced.”
“You carried me when I was little.”
“You were smaller and less judgmental.”
She opened one eye.
“I doubt that.”
I laughed.
It came out strangely.
Inside, I put her on the couch and went to get a washcloth.
She followed me into the bathroom.
“I can wash my own hair.”
May you like
“I know.”
“I’m ten.”
