My hand shook as I grabbed an open bottle of merlot, poured myself a glass that I drank in four long swallows—the fucking irony. I stepped onto the back porch. Across the street, another falling-apart bungalow like ours was being torn down to the studs, soon to be replaced, no doubt, by a new midcentury modern duplex. Its skeleton loomed in the darkness.
“Cassie!” My father’s voice was slurred, a false edge to the joviality, like a trapdoor. So many bad nights had started this way—Lisey! when my mother walked into the room, as if her mouth weren’t set in a grim, disappointed line, the presence of which would soon open that trapdoor, send them hurtling through the darkness. But he couldn’t hurt her anymore. He couldn’t hurt me. He could only hurt Andrew. And it was long past time to make sure he didn’t.
My mouth was dry. “Dad, what’s this about the power getting turned off?” No preamble. I couldn’t lose my nerve.
“How am I? Oh, I’m doing great, thanks.” My father laughed, and I flinched. “How are you? Been a while.”
“What happened,” I said, “with the power?”
“Jesus, I’m a few days late paying the bill, that’s all.” Thassall. “You’re telling me you’ve never been late on a bill?”
“I’ve never had a kid at home depending on light and heat,” I said.
“That’s right,” he said, and I knew I’d walked right into it, giving him a bruise to press. “You haven’t.”
We were both silent. Breathing.
“Look, it’ll be back on by tomorrow,” he said, sounding tired now.
“Okay, but what happened?” I tried for gentle, nonjudgmental. Like my mother. “Andrew said it’s been three days. Did you lose your job? Do you need money?”
“Money?” A low growl. “What, you think I can’t take care of my own house, my own son?”
“That’s not what I mean.” I ran my tongue over my teeth, tried to breathe, to slow my racing heart. “But you need to go to a meeting. Please. You can’t do this to Andrew.”
“Do what, exactly?”
“You’re supposed to be taking care of him! You promised.” I couldn’t believe how hurt I sounded, how childish.
Behind me, the front door opened and shut. Duke called, “Smells good, Cass— Oh, you’re outside.” And then he was beside me, his smile fading as he took in my clenched jaw, the way I was shivering despite the mild temperature. You okay? he mouthed.
I nodded, willing him to go back inside. He didn’t.
“Who do you think you are?” My father’s voice simmered, and I felt all my younger selves inside me like nesting dolls, quivering. “Leaving at the first opportunity and then calling out of the blue with ‘you promised.’”
I blinked against tears. “Either you get sober or I’m coming to get Andrew.”
Duke’s hand dropped from my shoulder. I’d gone too far. And not far enough.
“And I swear to God,” I said, trembling so hard now I could hardly hold the phone. “You hurt him, and I will make you pay.”
My phone timer went off as I hung up with my father. Neither of us moved.
“Cassie,” Duke said, low. “What the hell was that?”
I sank into one of the Adirondack chairs we’d bought on Craigslist. It was a vulnerable position to sit in, belly half tilted up, exposed. I stood up again on shaky legs. “I’ll tell you everything. Let me just—” I gestured to the house, the food that would burn soon.
Duke strode to the door. “I’ll do it.”
I was still standing there, clutching my elbows, when Duke returned. Above us, dusty-winged moths thrashed against the weak porch light.
I took a deep breath. “That was my dad.”
“Yeah. I gathered. But . . . you told him to get sober. Is he . . .” He hesitated.
“An alcoholic. Yes.”
Duke was standing close enough to me that I could smell the smokiness on his clothing. He didn’t reach out to touch me. “Since when?”
“I was nine when I found out,” I said. “I have no idea how long before that.”
The emotions played out plainly on Duke’s face—sympathetic eyes and clenched jaw, the desire to comfort me pitted against hurt that I’d kept this from him. I waited for him to ask why. All this time we’d been together, why hadn’t I told him?
“Is he getting help?” he asked instead.
I sighed. “He’s gone to AA off and on over the years. He was sober my last two years of high school. That was the longest stretch I can remember before Andrew was born.”
Those were the days of him knocking on my door, beseeching: “How do you feel about dusting off those old fishing poles?” And my mother dog-earing recipes in Better Homes and Gardens, as if the perfect quiche might erase our memories. In the living room at night, it was the two of them who sat thigh to thigh beneath the blue blanket with matted tassels, their heads close in the TV’s eerie flicker.
What did they whisper about in the privacy of those nights, when I slunk away because I did not—could not—trust the peace? Did they talk about me? Or were they too consumed with themselves, with the struggle of pretending, willing, believing things could be different?
“He relapsed right before my mom found out she was pregnant,” I said.
It had been early fall. A weekend, because she was still wearing her mint-green robe with the faded coffee stain on one fluffy lapel. I was about to say something when my father shuffled in from the hallway. The defeated slump of his shoulders, the way he kissed the top of my mother’s head, avoided my gaze entirely—the air went underwater thick. I hated myself for the pain of my disappointment, like a child who cried over not getting a Christmas gift she was never promised.
Duke was standing close enough to touch, still not reaching for me.
“He went back to meetings, but it was a struggle for a couple of months.” He didn’t hit her, though, I almost added. She was, apparently, protected by an invisible clump of cells. “I thought he’d been sober ever since Andrew was born, but”—I swallowed—“apparently not.”
“Jesus.” Duke shook his head, collapsed into one of the Adirondacks. “Poor kid. You’re just finding out about this?”
“Yeah.” My mouth tasted metallic, as if I’d bitten myself. I searched for blood with the tip of my tongue.
“But—” Duke looked up and I could see the hardening, like cement drying. “What was that about him hurting Andrew?”
This was it. My chance to finally tell him everything. You don’t have to do things alone. But self-preservation is in our DNA, an instinct that outlasts the extinction of other species. Lore would understand.
“I meant emotionally,” I said, stomach turning. “I just don’t want him hurt by all this.”
“And you going to get Andrew? What, like him coming to live with us?”
“Well, what am I supposed to do, Duke?” My voice rose, cracking. “Leave my little brother with a drunk who forgets him places and can’t pay the bills?” The righteous anger of this role—the sister who would act in her brother’s best interests, no matter the personal sacrifice—came as such a relief. I so wanted to be that person.
Duke cupped his hands over his nose and mouth, exhaling hard before removing them. “Were you even going to talk to me first? Was this going to be a conversation?”
“It is a conversation! We’re having it now!” I glared down at him. “You’re acting like he’s packing his bags as we speak. All I said was—”
“I heard what you said.” Duke batted away a moth, harder than necessary. “And would you have told me, by the way, if I hadn’t?”
I didn’t say anything.
Duke’s eyes flashed. “Yeah. And what are the odds he gets sober for good this time?”
“I don’t know.”
“So then? Andrew’s going to move here?” He gestured toward the house—the kitchen whose counter space I could touch end to end, our one bedroom, the bathroom with pedestal sink, our toothbrushes leaning against each other in a soap-scummed glass. “How would that even work?”
“He could sleep on the love seat until we find a bigger place,” I said. “And—”
“A bigger place?” Duke laughed. “We can barely afford this one.”