I shake my head and go try to sit beside Mom, like I’ve been doing all morning, but she stands up and walks closer to him.

I head toward my next safe place.

“How’d it go?” Cole asks, and gives me a hug.

“Okay, I guess,” I say. “I don’t really know.”

“Yeah, same. Glad it’s over, though.”

“Me, too.”

“You hungry? Because I’m starving.”

“Yeah,” I say.

Daddy appears over Cole’s right shoulder. “Your mom and I thought it would be a good idea if you came to eat dinner with me and Cole went to eat with her.”

Who thought what? I think, and shoot Mom an alarmed look.

Standing right beside him, she looks at me calmly and says, “It’s for the best. Your dad can drop you back off at my house when y’all finish up.”

She can’t be serious. Why would she make me go with him?

“You ready, Angel-face?” he asks with a weak smile.

A bright flash of panic runs through me, and I think about taking off down the empty hall, about trying to get away from it all like that duck on Judge Reed’s wall. But let’s be real, the duck can’t escape, and neither can I. I may not be stuffed with rags and cotton, but I’m stuck with Daddy for now.

REX

After my father leaves, I grab my phone off my desk, push the camera app, and flip it around to selfie mode. There’s a bad crack traveling diagonally across the screen from when I threw it across the room, but I can mostly see myself.

Still holding the picture of Mom, I bring our faces side by side. I can’t believe I never saw it. Our strong cheekbones, our many moles, our hooded eyes—alike. Satisfaction quickly fills me up. But I keep staring, eyes floating back and forth between us until I’m in straight-up awe.

You see, I used to think of my moles as tiny sins, little reminders of what I did. But looking at Mom’s moles is making them feel like tiny marks of sainthood or something. I know nobody’s about to erect a statue of me in a sanctuary or anything, but looking at her face is making mine feel holy and bright. Like it’s been washed clean.

But when I look up at the gray sky outside my window and back down at the big crack across the screen, I remember Mom’s beetles belly up among broken glass. Man, I don’t even want to think about that. But that doesn’t stop my mind from going back to how heated I was when I hurled my phone. Or flashing to my tight fists dreaming of going upside my father’s head.