Matthew looks at me with his head cocked and dead serious and says, “How did you end up going to boarding school anyway, Dad?”
A chill runs through me. I can still remember my 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!”, my brother immediately launching himself effing and cursing at Dad and chasing him retreating to the other room, and Mom screaming while I cowered in a corner.
Circumstances are very different now, I remind myself. “That,” I say, “is a long story.”