Lionel’s mouth was twisted into a slash of a smile. He’d stayed home from school, he’d barely spoken to anyone in the family for days except our father and only then in private. Much of the time he was playing video games in his room. The cut beneath his eye had not healed, he must have been picking at the scab. His jaws were unshaven. The neck of his T-shirt was stretched, and soiled. I smelled something sharp, rank as an animal’s smell lifting from him. I laughed nervously, edging away.

Lionel said, in a jeering singsong voice: “Hey there, ‘Vi-let Rue’! Where’re you going, you!”

I eased away. I fled.

Wanting to assure my angry brother—I won’t tell Dad. Or anyone. I told you—I promised.

The Siege

WITHOUT REGAINING CONSCIOUSNESS, HADRIAN JOHNSON died in the hospital on November 11.

NOW THE KERRIGAN HOUSEHOLD WAS TRULY UNDER SIEGE. LIKE A boat, buffeted by ferocious winds.

We Kerrigans huddled inside, clutching at one another. Daddy would protect us, we knew.

Jerr returned to work, where his employer and most of his fellow workers were inclined to be sympathetic toward him. Lionel was suspended indefinitely from school.

Fewer people dropped by the house. But Kerrigan relatives were loyal. Staying late into the night in the basement room Daddy had remodeled into a TV room, drinking, talking loudly, vehemently.

Just adults in the basement with Daddy. No kids including Jerr and Lionel.

With so many people in the house it wasn’t hard for me to avoid my brothers. At meals they ignored me, as they ignored their younger brothers and sisters, sitting next to Daddy, eating with their heads lowered and addressing one another in terse exchanges. Their lawyer’s last name was O’Hagan—you could hear their remarks peppered with these syllables—O’Hagan—but not what they were saying.

Since he’d shoved me in the kitchen Lionel rarely looked in my direction. I had come to think that he’d forgotten me, for he had much else to think about. Jerr’s pebble-colored eyes drifted over me, restless, brooding. Within a week or so my oldest brother had lost weight, his face was gaunt, his manner edgy, distracted. While Lionel ate hungrily Jerr pushed food about on his plate and preferred to drink beer from a can. Often he lifted the can so carelessly to his mouth, rivulets of liquid ran glistening down his chin. One evening Daddy told him no more, he’d had enough, and Jerr rose indignantly from the table unsteady on his feet murmuring what sounded like Fuck.

Or maybe, judging from Daddy’s reaction—Fuck you.