“My point is, he was murdered—right here in town—and you shouldn’t get mixed up in that. Anyway, aren’t there rules about investigating family? As in, don’t do it?”

Doug finished his drink, turning the glass in his freckled hand, and I wondered if this was his first or his fourth. His blinks were decelerating, and the booze would affect his concentration. I talked fast and prayed he’d do the same.

“What about Abe?”

“What about him?”

“You said Brett left Felicia and Crissy. But he left Abe, too.”

“Yeah,” Doug said with contempt, “and look what happened.”

This was the last thing I wanted to discuss with my brother, but the drive over had planted a seed in my head, the same unspeakable idea that had almost compelled me to flee. Awful as it was, I had to lay the theory to rest, and I was hoping my brother’s memory would prove useful.

“Doug,” I said almost inaudibly, thinking of Mom and Dad in bed right upstairs, “do you think he could have something to do with this?”

Doug studied the empty glass in his hand. “You’re asking if I think our cousin murdered his father.”

Nausea rolled over me like a groundswell. If that was true, it meant Abe was a killer even then. That no version of the friend I thought I knew was pure.

I don’t remember exactly when my mother told us Felicia had an anxiety disorder. Whether it was to shelter my brother and me, or to prime us for our family’s deficiencies, she doled out the dark truths about Crissy and Abe’s life over time. Every tidbit of information was a contribution to the arsenal of historical and psychological data Doug and I would need to navigate the craggy territory that was our kin.

When my cousins were kids, Aunt Fee wouldn’t wash their clothes until they were stiff with dried food and sweat. She cut their hair at home with dull scissors, and berated them if they tried to minimize the damage. More than once I’d seen her break Abe’s toys in some twisted attempt to acclimate them to her world, a place where faults made you undesirable, and being undesirable kept you safe.

There were more than a few flaws in her ideology. As a preteen, Abe had a terrible overbite, and as much as he begged, Felicia wouldn’t take him to an orthodontist. His faults didn’t keep him safe then. All they did was expose him to merciless mocking from his peers.

To everyone but her, Felicia’s rules seemed illogical and cruel. Crissy’s response was to fight off her mother’s demands like a rabid opossum. For his part, Abe did as he was told, and suffered for his obedience. If it wasn’t for me, I doubt he would have had a friend to his name.

“Abe’s childhood was seriously fucked up, no question about that.” Doug thought for a minute more before going on. “If Brett really was killed in 1998, that would have made Abe twelve. Almost the same age as Hen.” He shook his head in a way that implied heartbreak, but in the warm walnut light of the lamp that hung over the kitchen table, his face held an angry flush.