“I’m sorry, honey,” he said to Wendy. “But I think it’s better if I just go tonight. Maybe you can talk some sense into your mother.”

Wendy’s mom looked up at him, shocked and angry. She got up from the sofa and walked right up to Wendy’s dad.

“How dare you do that to your daughter,” she said, her voice tight and controlled, the way it got when she was really mad. “How dare you?”

Her father got a hard, cold expression that scared Wendy deep inside. “It takes two, Sara. Think about that.”

He turned and walked out of the room. A minute later, the front door slammed. And just like that, he was gone.

Chapter 50

50

“What the hell is the matter with you?”

Dennis could hear his father’s voice as soon as he snuck in the back door. It was like he had hit the Pause button on his way out. His parents were still having the same conversation they had been having when he had snuck out of the house earlier.

He had somehow managed to slip away from the supper table without attracting his father’s attention, which had been a minor miracle—especially because his stupid sisters weren’t there for a distraction. They had gone to the football game at the high school and then to a sleep-over. Stupid lucky cows. Dennis couldn’t imagine why they had friends and he didn’t. They were so stupid.

Anyway, Dennis had managed to slide out of his chair and out of the room without attracting attention. His father was too busy going on about how he was being betrayed at work, and how Dixon didn’t appreciate him. He seemed to be just talking out loud, like he was trying to figure it all out, and it didn’t really matter if anyone was listening or not. Then every once in a while he would direct something at Dennis’s mother, and she would have to say something to prove that she was paying attention.

Dennis had gotten enough of his father’s attention the night before, getting punished for taking the finger to school. His dad had been furious about that. Dennis had embarrassed him and made him look bad at work.

He had made Dennis take off all his clothes except his underpants and stand in the corner of the dining room while everyone else ate dinner.

“You humiliated me,” his father said. “Now I’m going to humiliate you.”

He had been made to stand there for hours, until he had to go to the bathroom so bad he wet his pants.

After he cleaned up the mess, he had been sent to bed. He had waited until he got checked on, then climbed out his window and down the oak tree that grew beside the house.