“Danielle, I don’t know exactly what happened that night. I can’t tell you who did what to whom and I won’t tell you any of it was fair. But you’re wrong about your mother. She’d had enough. The day before your father … did what he did, Jenny called me. She wanted the name of a good divorce lawyer. She planned on kicking your father out. She’d had enough.”

“What?”

My aunt hesitated, then seemed to reach some kind of decision. “She’d met someone. A good man, she told me. A good man who was willing to help her. She just needed to get her ducks in a row. Then she was going to ask your father for a divorce.”

I didn’t say anything, just stared at my aunt, stunned.

“It might be,” she continued now, “that your mother never confronted your father with your accusations. Maybe, after hearing what you had to say, she was angry enough to kick him out that night. Told him she wanted a divorce. And he …”

I could see it in my mind’s eye. The gun, which I’d carried to the bedroom, now lying on my mother’s nightstand. My mother, yelling at my drunken father to get the hell out. My father, caught off guard, enraged by my mother’s sudden defiance, seeing his own handgun, reaching for it …

Natalie, wondering about the noise. Johnny, curious about the loud pop down the hall.

I loved them. All these years later, I still loved them. If I’d known back then that I had to make the choice between my father’s abuse and my family’s love, I would’ve chosen my family. I would’ve chosen them.

“Danielle,” my aunt tried now, “it’s not your fault.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s been twenty-five years. Will everyone stop telling me that?”

“Will you ever start believing it?”

“We were a family. Everyone’s action is someone else’s reaction. If he hadn’t started drinking, if she hadn’t tried to leave him, if I hadn’t found his damn gun. We might as well have been a row of dominoes. I carried the gun to my parents’ bedroom. I told my mom what he was doing. I tipped the first domino, then we all started to fall.”

“Your father is to blame!” my aunt said sharply.

“Because he killed your sister?” I retorted just as sharply. “Or because he saddled you with his kid?”

My aunt crossed the tiny space in three strides and slapped me. The sting of the blow shocked me. I stared at her, startled by her fury.