A couple of cousins chuckled into their cups. Someone’s chair scraped the concrete, then stopped.
Derek widened his stance, puffing himself up for the whole backyard. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll go easy on the office Marine.”
Mallory looked down at the hamburger buns. My mother said, “Derek, don’t start.”
But she did not say, Laurel, you do not deserve that. She had never said it when he joked about my “printer-jam combat experience.” She had never said it when he called my retirement easy money. She had never said it when he bragged about paying for family repairs I had quietly funded from my own account because Mallory begged me not to embarrass him.
At 4:18 p.m., Caleb’s left palm was still pressed flat to the mat. Later, I would remember that detail with the kind of clarity that feels like evidence:
The pale scrape near his wrist.
