THEN
His mother had written him a letter. DJ found it on his dresser, the morning after she left, the rectangular envelope propped against a stack of video game cartridges. Its presence meant that his mom had been in his room while he was sleeping. If only he had woken up, he could have stopped her from going, or begged her to take him with her. But despite the horrors of the day, he had slept deeply and soundly.
He read the missive alone in his room, tears sliding down his cheeks.
DJ,
I’m sorry to leave you like this, but I am so broken. Your sister’s death has killed me, too. I need to go home for a while, to be with my family. I need to surround myself with nature, with trees and rivers and mountains. When I stop seeing your sister’s torture in my head, when I stop hearing her screaming and crying and begging for her life, I can be your mother again. When I find a way to heal, I’ll send for you. I promise.
I know you’ll be angry, but please try to understand. Stay strong. Stand up to your father.
I love you.
Mom
DJ dried his eyes with the backs of his hands; then he crumpled the letter into a ball and tossed it into his wastebasket. When he walked out to the kitchen, his father was at the table. He had a mug in front of him—alcohol, not coffee, DJ could smell it—and a bowl of cereal.
“Your mom’s gone,” his father said, crunching the flakes.
“I know.”
“She’s weak. Always has been.”
“I guess.” DJ went to the freezer, grabbed a box of frozen waffles.
“She thinks she can go back home to Alaska and pretend she never had a daughter or a son or a husband. She thinks she can forget about us and all the shit that’s gone on here.”
DJ dropped the frozen disks into the toaster.
“So I’m the one who has to stay here and deal with the fucking trial, and the fucking lawyers, and those fucking monsters that took your sister.” He glowered at his son. “I’m the one who has to stay here and look after you.”
“Mom said she’ll send for me when she’s better.”
His dad laughed, a humorless snort. “She’s not going to send for you, dumbass.” His chair scraped across the tiles as he stood. “You’re never going to see her again.”
DJ wanted to cave the man’s skull in with the cast-iron frying pan that sat on a back burner of the stove, or grab a kitchen knife and plunge it into his dad’s chest. But he couldn’t. He was too soft, too weak, too afraid. And now his dad was all he had left.
His father set his mug and bowl in the sink. When he leaned in close and spoke, DJ could smell the whiskey that made the man so cruel.
“It’s just you and me now, tubby.”
He slapped his son’s belly and it jiggled on impact. As his dad left the room, the toaster popped. The sweet, yeasty scent of the waffles churned DJ’s stomach and he leaned over the sink. For a moment, he thought he might be sick, but he forced the feeling down, swallowed the bile, the rage, the sadness.
On autopilot, he put the waffles on a plate, smothered them in margarine and artificial maple syrup. He sat and shoveled the food into his mouth, trying to mask the taste of hatred and anger, but it lingered. Each bite was bitter, chemically, but he kept eating, waiting for the numbing effect, the almost trancelike state he could achieve when his body was full of sugar. It wasn’t working. He put more waffles in the toaster and waited. He couldn’t stop eating until the pain was gone, because he knew his dad was right.
He was never going to see his mother again.