It was a few years later, when I was fourteen, that we found out what had been going on for awhile. I remember it keenly. I’d grown into nearly a woman’s body by then; I was conventionally attractive, aware of the power that lended me, and more than happy to flaunt it, so I dressed as scandalously as I could get away with. When you’d see my outfits, you would look at me with a sneer that didn’t belie the pain in your eyes, and spit, “Go put on a fucking — Barney shirt or something.” I would laugh at you and continue doing whatever I wanted, which I knew secretly pleased you.

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Things had been going missing for a bit. But we were a big family, a chaotic and a messy one, so it got chalked up to carelessness. We thought people were breaking into our cars and stealing the petty cash and change that we let gather up for Sonic or Taco Bell. We didn’t think to check the gun safe. It wasn’t til enough jewelry disappeared from momma’s dresser that we really caught notice.

One of the rings you’d pawned was mine. Given to momma by Gigi when she was sixteen, and by momma to me when I was ten or so. A pretty gold thing, with a teardrop amethyst.

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 I can’t remember how momma found out. I just know that she had my youngest brother — the sweet tempered, quiet one, who’d always been like a second daddy to me — meet her in the sprawling mall parking lot and traded me out to him.

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She went to go meet you, and my brother came and gossiped with the other homeschool moms, like a duck in water.

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I got the full story after. You’d pawned and stolen, to pay for drugs. In that moment, in the car on the same kudzu-covered highway, I felt so betrayed. I hoped that you would pay for it.

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It was a moment of cruelty. I was hurt. I wanted my pain to be understood. 

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But at home, momma told me that it was. She told me how you’d confessed, how you — this tough, terrifying Marine — had bent over and cried like a child in the pawnshop parking lot. How you’d gone to every store and gotten every little thing back. How when you had found it out was my ring you’d taken you wept so hard. You wanted, so badly, to be better. You would do anything.

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So I printed out a fantasy story I’d written, a childish thing, and sent it with my mom in a clear plastic essay folder — something for you to read while withdrawing. And soon enough you came home. You were laughing again and cooking at three AM with those bloodshot eyes, bent over the blaring stove fan and offering me midnight corn-beef hash. I was as unruly as ever, and you laughed and said, “I pity the fool who marries that.”

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