few dents in the living room drywall in the shape of my head to prove it. I was taller than him now—another thing I suspected he hated—but he was broader than me and in good shape. (He’d kept up with the workout schedule he and Quinn had created together, with the weights in the garage.) Not a man to push without expecting to get pushed back. Hard.
Not a man for letting someone else have the last word, either.
As I shoved open the screen door, he fired off his final volley. I was expecting it; most of our fights ended in the same way with the same words, or similar ones. But that didn’t mean they hurt any less when they came. “You’re just like your mother,” he said, his voice thick with such barely repressed disgust I wondered why he bothered.
I was too much McDonough and not enough Bradshaw. I’d been hearing that since I was old enough to understand the words. I resembled my mom’s side of the family—the height, dark hair color, blue eyes, and the genetic lack of a stick up my ass.
According to my dad, the McDonoughs were trailer-park trash—all of them criminals or lazy, lacking in ambition and good sense. Of course, that hadn’t stopped my dad, hometown hero returned, from hooking up with my mom, even as he was “officially” dating the mayor’s daughter.
When my mom got pregnant, they had to get married. No choice in that. Not in Wingate. The town might turn a blind eye to slumming, but leaving Mom behind in a “family way”? Bad idea, particularly for someone with my dad’s reputation and ambitions.
That, at least, explained Quinn. I had to presume, then, based on the sheer level of frustration he seemed to have at my mere existence, that I had been another even less-welcome accident. That he wished I’d never been born.
I’d said as much to my mom one day when I was eleven and I’d come into the house bleeding and humiliated (and even worse, fighting off tears) after a particularly rough game of “touch” football with my dad and Quinn.
She was quiet, focused on spraying Bactine on my scraped-up elbows. “Your dad grew up in a trailer the next row over from mine. Did you know that?”
I stared at her. Grandma and Grandpa Bradshaw lived a few blocks away in a small, neat house, where the furniture was still in late-nineties mint condition beneath the plastic protective covers. At least they did now. But that explained why some of the things they did—like letting their lawn grow too long because they didn’t want to pay someone to mow it, or fishing pop cans out of the neighbors’ recycling bins to turn them in for money—drove Dad vein-popping insane.
“He’s not a bad person,” my mom said in that same calm, even voice. “He just doesn’t know how to be okay with who he is, where he’s from. And sometimes we remind him of everything he’s trying to forget.” Her mouth tightened in a hard line before her entire expression collapsed and she started to cry.
She stopped herself quickly, wiping her eyes and returning to bandaging my wounds like nothing had happened. “But we’ve got each other. So we’re okay, right?” she’d asked me in a determinedly cheerful voice.
I’d nodded quickly and repeatedly, catching a glimpse of my scared face in the bathroom mirror. There’s nothing worse than seeing your mom fall apart. Particularly someone like my mom, who had always seemed impervious to everything my dad threw in her direction.
Seemed being the key word there, as appearances apparently turned out to have no bearing on reality.
You’re just like your mother. Standing there in the back door, just a foot away from escape, I pictured my dad’s words as arrows, striking a target on my back. Bull’s-eye, every one of them. I shrugged involuntarily against the imagined sensation of them lodging right below my shoulder blades. “Not enough like her,” I mumbled. Because, after all, I was still here.
I let the door slam shut after me.
Trey lifted his head up
Not a man for letting someone else have the last word, either.
As I shoved open the screen door, he fired off his final volley. I was expecting it; most of our fights ended in the same way with the same words, or similar ones. But that didn’t mean they hurt any less when they came. “You’re just like your mother,” he said, his voice thick with such barely repressed disgust I wondered why he bothered.
I was too much McDonough and not enough Bradshaw. I’d been hearing that since I was old enough to understand the words. I resembled my mom’s side of the family—the height, dark hair color, blue eyes, and the genetic lack of a stick up my ass.
According to my dad, the McDonoughs were trailer-park trash—all of them criminals or lazy, lacking in ambition and good sense. Of course, that hadn’t stopped my dad, hometown hero returned, from hooking up with my mom, even as he was “officially” dating the mayor’s daughter.
When my mom got pregnant, they had to get married. No choice in that. Not in Wingate. The town might turn a blind eye to slumming, but leaving Mom behind in a “family way”? Bad idea, particularly for someone with my dad’s reputation and ambitions.
That, at least, explained Quinn. I had to presume, then, based on the sheer level of frustration he seemed to have at my mere existence, that I had been another even less-welcome accident. That he wished I’d never been born.
I’d said as much to my mom one day when I was eleven and I’d come into the house bleeding and humiliated (and even worse, fighting off tears) after a particularly rough game of “touch” football with my dad and Quinn.
She was quiet, focused on spraying Bactine on my scraped-up elbows. “Your dad grew up in a trailer the next row over from mine. Did you know that?”
I stared at her. Grandma and Grandpa Bradshaw lived a few blocks away in a small, neat house, where the furniture was still in late-nineties mint condition beneath the plastic protective covers. At least they did now. But that explained why some of the things they did—like letting their lawn grow too long because they didn’t want to pay someone to mow it, or fishing pop cans out of the neighbors’ recycling bins to turn them in for money—drove Dad vein-popping insane.
“He’s not a bad person,” my mom said in that same calm, even voice. “He just doesn’t know how to be okay with who he is, where he’s from. And sometimes we remind him of everything he’s trying to forget.” Her mouth tightened in a hard line before her entire expression collapsed and she started to cry.
She stopped herself quickly, wiping her eyes and returning to bandaging my wounds like nothing had happened. “But we’ve got each other. So we’re okay, right?” she’d asked me in a determinedly cheerful voice.
I’d nodded quickly and repeatedly, catching a glimpse of my scared face in the bathroom mirror. There’s nothing worse than seeing your mom fall apart. Particularly someone like my mom, who had always seemed impervious to everything my dad threw in her direction.
Seemed being the key word there, as appearances apparently turned out to have no bearing on reality.
You’re just like your mother. Standing there in the back door, just a foot away from escape, I pictured my dad’s words as arrows, striking a target on my back. Bull’s-eye, every one of them. I shrugged involuntarily against the imagined sensation of them lodging right below my shoulder blades. “Not enough like her,” I mumbled. Because, after all, I was still here.
I let the door slam shut after me.
Trey lifted his head up
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