Chapter Two

IN THE MORNING, THE CROWS ARE still here. And by here, I mean everywhere. Crows on every branch of the tree in our front yard, until it is more feather than leaf.

I stand at my bedroom window watching the birds rustle and twitch on the branches. They’re on Mrs. Stieg’s roof, too, shuffling along her rain gutters.

Our front door slams.

He’s back.

I hurry out of my room and into the shower, desperate to normalize the morning, to remind him we have school. Sometimes if we do things just right, he matches our calm. He migrates toward our normal. As the scalding water hits me, I hope that this is one of those times.

I love school, but this year is different. It’s the last year. My countdown has officially begun, and last night was a more ominous beginning than I’d wanted. One year. I have one year to find a way to keep my sisters safe if I want to go to college.

When I get to the kitchen, he’s not there, but Mom is. She startles when I walk in, and coffee slips over the lip of her mug, splashing her fingers. She doesn’t seem to notice.

“Good morning, Leighton,” she says. She smiles, but it’s not a Mom smile. It doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Mom used to smile at us like we were all in on a joke together. Now I get the same hollow one she flashes to strangers.

“Morning,” I say.

He’s brought her flowers. Scarlet roses that sit in a chipped vase next to the sink. He likes to apologize with small gestures that never match the gravity of what he’s done.

It seems to work.

I hesitate, wondering if this is a morning to provoke or let go. “He’s back?” I ask.

Now even the hollow smile is gone.

“Drop it, Leighton,” Mom says.

This is a morning to let go.

“He slept at his office. What more do you want?”

I rattle off the list in my head. His arrest, his apology, his relocation, his kindness. His death. It depends on the day, the hour, the moment, and my mood, but there’s a lot more I want than him sleeping in his office.

“I have work today,” Mom says. She’s always grabbed a few shifts a week waitressing at the diner, but she’s been picking up more lately. Trying to make up for the construction business not doing as well. “Will you come right home after school for the girls?” I ignore the abrupt change in subject. Walking into the living room, I begin to pick up framed photographs from the floor, hooking them back on their nails.

It’s like the house itself knows when these nights are coming. There are clues, if we watch carefully: a subtle darkening in the corners of the rooms; the picture frames tilting on their nails, preparing to fall at the first commotion; the sudden compulsion to whisper, as though the house will carry our secrets to his ears. The pressure inside builds for weeks, until it is so palpable I can taste it on my tongue—metallic and biting. Like blood. The taste of anger.

I step back into the kitchen and lift the last frame from the floor. It’s a photo of two teenagers wearing crowns. They’ve been named king and queen. I study the girl in the photo, my eyes gravitating to the things we have in common. Same pale white skin with a few copper freckles across the bridge of the nose. Same wide smile. I wonder how we’re different. Her hair is vibrant red, where mine is a lighter, strawberry blonde. And what about the things you can’t see? Like her capacity to forgive so much hurt. Do I carry that in my bones, too, like I do the shape of her jaw?

Instead of hanging this photo up, I lay it on the counter beside the roses.

She has to decide whether to put it back on the wall.

The last thing I do before it’s time to usher my sisters outside to the bus stop is reach past Mom to plug the phone in. This stupid, useless house phone. He told Mom and me that we could have cell phones last year. Then he remembered that cell phones call police and cost money, so we never got them. There’s just this one phone, with a cord that does nothing to help us when he tears it out of the wall.

I slam my finger down on the receiver and hold the phone to my ear.

“Dial tone’s back,” I say.