Matthew looks at me with his head cocked and dead serious and says, “Do you not like Uncle Roger?”
A chill runs through me. I can still remember Dad lunging at my older brother, smashing him in the face with a clenched fist and the explosion of red from my brother’s mouth and nose, and Dad snarling, “You’re in enough goddamned trouble as it is!” Was it the beginning of the end? I used to think so, but there had been so many beginnings of the end after that, each worse than the one before.
It might have been easier had my brother just stayed dead the first time, or the second, but he didn’t, and I miss him every single day.
