Lexi
‘You asshole,’ I said.
‘I didn’t do it,’ Edgar Allan said. Or Oren. This man who called himself Oren. ‘He did.’
‘I’ve never heard any of this,’ I said.
‘How much has your mother told you about him?’ he asked. ‘Other than calling him a bastard.’
I didn’t answer.
He asked again, ‘How much?’
‘I told you. Almost nothing.’
He said, ‘So do you want to hear or not?’
I didn’t know. ‘Does it get worse?’
‘It has its ups and downs,’ he said.
‘My dad told you all of this?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘When?’ I asked. ‘Where?’
He said, ‘I’ll tell you everything if you want to hear.’
The wooden roof beams in the attic ticked as the night cooled outside. The voices of the people in the yard had fallen to a murmur. A motorcycle circled the house. And circled. The generator in the back of the yellow pickup hummed. Stuttered. Hummed again. One of the German shepherds barked. A light glowed outside the vent at one end of the attic where the floodlights shined at the house. I listened for Mom or Walter or Cristofer. Heard nothing.
‘Tell it,’ I said.