Chương 1
"""Blake had one hand on June’s shoulder when he drove her face into the castle cake.
The sound was smaller than I would remember it later, just a brittle crack of sugar windows and the soft collapse of three nights of work under the weight of my daughter’s body.
For half a second, nobody moved.
Then June screamed.
I caught her before she slid from the table, and lavender frosting smeared across my shirt as she buried her face against my chest.
“Dad, it stings.”
“I’ve got you.”
Her hands were shaking.
A bright line of blood appeared beneath her left eye where one of the amber sugar windows had broken against her skin.
Behind us, somebody laughed once and stopped.
Blake stepped backward with both palms raised.
“Oh, come on.”
I looked at him.
His grin disappeared.
“It was a joke, Ethan.”
June made a small choking sound against my chest.
I handed her to my cousin Rachel, who had already grabbed a clean dish towel from the kitchen.
“Hold this under her eye.”
“Ethan.”
Rachel caught my wrist before I turned away.
“Don’t.”
I pulled free.
Blake barely had time to straighten before I shoved him.
He stumbled into the gift table, knocking two wrapped boxes onto the floor.
My mother gasped.
Not because June was bleeding.
Because Blake’s shoulder had struck the wall.
“Ethan, what is wrong with you?”
She rushed to him and brushed frosting from the sleeve of his charcoal coat.
Blake stared at me with the stunned outrage of a man who had spent thirty-two years believing consequences were something that happened to other people.
“You shoved me.”
“You hurt my daughter.”
“I barely touched her.”
June was crying behind me.
My father rose from his chair at the head of the dining table.
He did not hurry.
Walter Mercer never hurried when he was angry because making other people wait for his anger was part of how he used it.
He crossed the room and stopped beside the ruined cake.
A lavender tower had fallen onto its side.
The little paper flag June had colored that morning lay in a puddle of icing.
My father looked at Blake first.
“You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
Then he looked at me.
His signet ring struck the edge of the table once.
“You put your hands on your brother over a cake?”
I heard Rachel whisper, “Jesus Christ.”
“It wasn’t the cake.”
My voice sounded unfamiliar.
“He shoved June into it.”
Blake gave an exhausted little laugh.
“I was messing around with her.”
“She’s bleeding.”
“Kids bleed.”
That was when I moved toward him again.
Rachel stepped between us.
“Ethan, take June.”
My father pointed at me.
“Enough.”
The room obeyed him.
It always had.
My mother stopped fussing with Blake’s coat.
My aunt lowered her eyes.
Even the children near the hallway went quiet.
June did not.
She kept crying into the towel.
My father glanced toward her as if the noise were an inconvenience somebody should handle.
“You embarrassed your brother in front of this family.”
I stared at him.
For a moment, I genuinely believed I had misheard him.
Then my mother said, “Walter, his temper is up.”
“I can see that.”
My father looked at me again.
“Apologize.”
Blake shifted his weight and inspected his sleeve.
There was a streak of lavender frosting near the cuff.
“You heard him.”
I crossed the room and took June from Rachel.
She wrapped both arms around my neck.
Her breath came in little uneven bursts against my collar.
“Dad, can we go home?”
“Yes.”
My father’s expression changed.
It was not anger yet.
It was disbelief.
I had spent most of my life backing down before he reached disbelief.
“Ethan.”
I picked up June’s coat from the back of a chair.
“You walk out that door before you apologize, don’t bother coming back.”
My mother whispered his name.
He ignored her.
I slipped June’s coat around her shoulders without putting her down.
My fingers were clumsy with the zipper.
The room smelled of vanilla, coffee, and the expensive cedar cologne Blake had worn since my father bought him his first bottle at seventeen.
“Do you understand me?”
My father came closer.
“The family trust gets reviewed next spring.”
I finally looked at him.
His face had gone pale around the mouth.
“You want to behave like some stranger who doesn’t know what this family has done for him, I can make that official.”
June tightened her arms around me.
My father lowered his voice.
“Apologize to your brother, or lose this family and your inheritance.”
Blake said nothing.
That mattered more than I wanted it to.
There had been a part of me, stupid and stubborn and apparently ten years old forever, that expected him to laugh and tell Dad to stop.
He only rubbed the frosting from his cuff with his thumb.
I looked around the room.
My mother was crying quietly now, though she had not come near June.
Aunt Patricia studied the carpet.
Rachel looked furious.
My father waited.
Blake waited.
They all seemed to believe the same thing.
I would bend.
I had always bent.
June lifted her face from my shoulder.
One eye was swollen from crying.
The other watched me through strands of frosting-stiffened hair.
“Did I do something bad?”
That question finished what Blake had started.
“No, baby.”
I kissed her forehead.
“You didn’t do anything bad.”
Then I carried her out.
My father called my name once.
I kept walking.
The emergency clinic needed four stitches beneath June’s eye.
She sat on the examination table wearing a paper bib while a nurse named Denise carefully washed dried frosting from her hair with warm cloths.
June apologized every time Denise had to replace one.
“Honey, these things cost about four cents.”
Denise tossed another cloth into the bin.
“You can bankrupt us at eight.”
May you like
June almost smiled.
I stood beside the sink with my hands in my pockets because whenever I took them out, they shook.
