I’m not sure when it happened…
When it began to crack and alter shape…
Looking back, there are so many moments that could be the one, the origin.
If you asked anyone who wasn’t family, they’d say it happened the day I was born.
That the moment I came into this world as a Callahan, the innocence, the morality, and the virtues that are normally common to everyone else, were defective. Like a house with fractured windows. If you asked anyone within my family they’d say the windows were not fractured but frosted and bulletproof because that is how it should be. After all, the people who were pointing at my windows were the same people who used blinds. That was my family all right…stupidly rich, dangerously powerful, unspeakably ruthless, and obsessed with extended metaphors. But the thing was…I didn’t care if I was a house with fractured or frosted or bulletproof windows. If people were curious to know the type of man I was, they were free to find out at their own peril.
What I cared about was when.
When did it happen?
When did I understand what it meant to be a Callahan?
To be Ethan Antonio Giovanni Callahan.
Staring up at the waters above me until my eyes drifted closed, one memory, one moment came forward…