Jake & Bill will never speak of it again

Bill Marks must have noticed he left Ashley at his parents’ house about an hour after he left. Ashley was doing dishes with his mother when her phone, still on the dinner table, sounded an incoming text. She ignored it.

Suddenly, Bill Marks is in the kitchen with a pistol. Bill points it at his mother.

Ashley screams. “Fuck!”

Bill is wide-eyed. Sweating. Meth? Jake wonders. Bill looks like a mix of Bill and someone else. Something else. Something animal.

“Put the fucking gun down, Bill,” Mr. Marks says. His cell phone is in his hand, and no one else in the room knows he’s already dialed 911.

“Whatever he told you, it’s not true!” Bill yells.

The four people not holding a pistol look at one another. Or more accurately, three of them look at Jake.

“I didn’t tell them anything,” he says.

“You said you were gonna tell them,” Bill says.

“I didn’t get to it yet.”

Bill rushes forward and puts the pistol to Jake’s head. “And you fucking won’t!”

Mr. Marks lunges at his elder son and hits him in the middle. The gun flies into the air and lands with a thud. Bill starts punching his father, and Jake tries to pull him off.

Bill has something in him for sure. Has the strength of a horse.

Ashley’s screams are the only normal thing in the house aside from the décor. Everyone else is used to this violence. Everyone else is used to Bill’s wake. Waves that ripple for weeks and months and years.

When the police arrive, they have no idea they’re about to solve a missing-persons case that’s nearly two years old.

Bill says, “I didn’t do nothing! It was all Jake!”

Bill says, “I’m a quarter Mexican! This is police brutality!”