Then, Jerr conceded that just possibly he’d struck something, or someone, driving on Delahunt Road on Saturday night. And he’d been drinking—a few beers. And maybe speeding, a few miles over the forty-five-mile-an-hour limit.

Definitely, he’d heard a thud. He and Lionel both. Looked in the rearview mirror but didn’t see anything, guessed it might’ve been a deer, or a bicycle abandoned at the side of the road.

Had anyone else been with them?—my brothers were asked.

At first, reluctant to give the names of the other boys. For they were not the kind of guys to rat on their friends.

At first, shaking their heads no.

Though soon, after repeated questions, and Daddy’s increasing impatience, they acknowledged yes—there were two other guys with them, in the backseat of the car.

And so, my brothers did “rat” on their friends after all. (Would this be held against them?—it did not seem so.)

I would wonder when our father was told by police officers about Hadrian Johnson—what had been done to him, what condition he was in; when this had happened, and what a witness had reported.

When Daddy had no choice but to realize that the trouble his sons were in wasn’t just a hit-and-run accident.

After seven hours Daddy was allowed to bring my brothers back to the house. They had not (yet) been arrested. They had been warned, and had agreed, not to leave South Niagara but to be available for further questioning as soon as the next day.

It was after 9:00 P.M. They were exhausted, and they were starving. In the kitchen they ate the supper Mom had prepared for them, kept warm in the oven. No one else was welcome in the room though we were all told—by Daddy, for Mom could not bear to speak—that there’d been a “misunderstanding” by the South Niagara police—a “misidentification”—that would be straightened out in the morning, with the lawyer’s help.

Rick asked if it had anything to do with Hadrian Johnson getting beaten and Daddy said angrily no it did not.

What we could see of our older brothers, they were looking fatigued, grim. Their jaws were dark with stubble and their eyes were rimmed with shadow. Lionel didn’t smirk as he usually did if someone was looking at him more intently than he liked and Jerr ignored us altogether.

Katie and I went to bed, later than our usual hour. And in our beds we lay unable to sleep. Katie said, “I guess Jerr and Lionel are in some kind of trouble from the other night. With Jerr’s car? You think—they were drinking?”

Of Hadrian Johnson she did not speak, as if she’d forgotten him.

And I’d forgotten him, too. And the baseball bat.

Strange to be lying beneath a warm comforter, in flannel pajamas, shivering. So hard, my teeth were chattering.