“Oh, all right, have your fun, but leave me out of it.”

“I will. Let’s meet right back here tomorrow night and see how things go.”

“It’s a date.”

Relieved, Janey closed her eyes and held on tight to him, thankful that he had shared his pain with her.

“Janey?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for not dying on me. I never would’ve been able to live without you.”

“I’d like to say no problem, but that doesn’t seem appropriate since it was apparently a huge problem for you and David and many others.”

“They would all agree with me that you and our beautiful son were well worth it.”

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Owen was being hunted. Pursued. Chased. His father was home and looking for him, and there was nowhere to hide from his wrath. He’d done something to make him mad again, and there’d be hell to pay. He made himself as small as he could get and hid behind the bunk beds in the room his sisters shared. They weren’t home, so maybe his dad wouldn’t look for him there.

In the distance, he could hear his mother screaming and crying, telling her husband to leave Owen alone. It hadn’t been his fault that the window got broken. All the kids in the neighborhood had been playing basketball in the driveway when one of them hit the window.

The crack of flesh on flesh ended his mother’s cries and forced Owen to hold back one of his own so he wouldn’t be found. He’d hit her. Again. Every time she tried to defend him or his siblings against his father’s rage, he’d strike out first against her. Even knowing what was coming, she still tried to stop him. But nothing could stop Mark Lawry when he was in one of his rages.

“A man comes home from work and wants to relax a little, and what does he find? A broken window he has to deal with because his goddamned kid can’t control his friends. Well, I don’t think I should have to deal with it when I wasn’t even here when it happened.”

“I’ll get someone out to fix it,” Sarah said in a small voice. “You don’t have to worry about it.”

“And who’s going to pay for that?”

“It’s glass, Mark. Glass breaks. Things happen.”

“Shut up! Just shut up!”

Owen began to cry, silently pleading with his mother to do as his father told her and shut up. All her begging wouldn’t change the inevitable and would only get her another slap or punch. Mark Lawry was enraged, and someone had to pay. Owen would rather it be him than one of his younger siblings or his mother.