Kennet was sobbing now, his tears mixing with the rain that poured down over Clayton.

“Don’t you know?” Emil said, rocking him. “You damn fool boy. If you die, I die.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Come inside. Your mother needs to see your face and you need to answer for what you did.”

“I can’t.”

Emil’s fingers turned him to face his deeds, moved him forward. “You can. And you will.”

The four siblings were sitting in dry clothes around the kitchen table. Emil walked straight by them and into the pantry. Kennet followed. He’d go to meet this hiding. He welcomed it. He’d remember it. If it helped loosen the shameful fingers choking him, he’d even be grateful for it.

But then Minor got up from the table. “All of us,” he said. “We all go.”

Nalle got up. “It was all our idea.”

Little got up. Even Trudy. Up until then, she had only taken her licks from Ingrid with a wooden spoon. Kennet’s heart contracted at the sight of her now, chin up, shoulders squared. Marching with a soldier’s deadpan resignation into the little store room with her brothers. All for one and one for all. Her little teeth clenched in her jaw and her slim fingers hooked on the rim of the sugar barrel as she took five from the strap. She backed to the wall by the jars of preserves, shook off Minor’s encouraging pat and became a stone.

Up the chain in age order. Little took his five. Then Nalle. Then Minor, who, Kennet noticed, had changed out of his wet clothes into his thickest corduroys. Emil must’ve noticed too. His fifth stroke made Minor bark a startled “Fuck,” which got him a sixth.

Then it was Kennet’s turn. He got five and was about to straighten up when Emil planted a hand in his back and held him down.

“All of you wait in the kitchen,” he said to the others. “Shut the door.”

He kept Kennet pushed down as footsteps shuffled out of the pantry and the door clicked closed.

“Drop your trousers.”

Kennet swallowed hard. His face burned and his legs shook but he set his teeth, dropped his pants and took a fold of his shirt between his teeth. He bit the fabric hard as the belt crackled another five times across his bare butt. His skin was still wet and cold and it hurt like fuck.

“That’s for Minor,” Emil said. No emotion in his voice. He could’ve been observing the grass was green.

Kennet gripped the edge of the barrel harder, fingertips finding a little burr on one of the hoops. He understood now what was coming.

All your mother’s children.