“What if I’m as bad as her?” Dean chokes up. “That everything she’s raised me around is so ingrained in me I won’t even know, and then I do something to mess us up?”

“Why would you think that?” I touch Dean’s arm. He slowly turns to face me, his arms resting on the wheel.

“When Jamal’s story came out…my first thought wasn’t he’s innocent. It was wondering, how could he do that? At the table, my mom was going off on how rampant Black crime is, it was only time before something like this would happen again…I didn’t respond. I was still trying to understand, sort through Angela being dead. I went to the police station because I was worried what Jamal being guilty would do to you. Not…not because I thought Jamal was innocent.” Dean looks away.

My throat aches. How could he? It feels like he punched me in the gut. Betrayal.

“Then when you got out of the car with your mom, it shook me. I saw how broken you both were, thought about my friendship with Jamal, and felt ashamed. It’s been eating me ever since. How easily I could turn against someone I know so well, and what would I do if it was a stranger’s story on TV. I have these thoughts sometimes that I know are wrong. What if I’m just as bad as my mom?”

He wants answers I can’t give. I can’t make him feel better. Before hearing this, I wanted to take all Dean’s pain away, and now…There’s so much I don’t know about Dean.

He breaks down crying in front of me, waiting for me to pick him up, but I can’t. I want him to know how much it hurts. How angry I am that at one point he thought Jamal was guilty.

The hurt he feels now is something I live through every day. Never knowing what lurks, what kind of ugly, racist bullshit will rear its head and hurt me. How a thing like that can easily shift my day badly. I won’t fix it for him. Not in the way he wants it to be fixed—easy, without vulnerability. It’s never been easy for me.

“I’m sorry I doubted Jamal.” Dean pulls my hands closer to him. I leave them limp. “I promise I haven’t done that since the police station. I just needed you to know I’ve got some work I need to do, but I’m here for you. Things will be different this time. It’s not going to be like your dad. Not if I can help it.”