Not again.
I watched Patricia’s face.
She looked at her husband first, not at Wade.
That told me they both understood what had been said.
Ava heard it too.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand, leaving a faint red mark from her split knuckle near her cheek.
Then she looked at every adult in that room.
“We’re children,” she said, “and every adult in this room chose him over us.”
No one defended themselves.
There was nothing left to defend.
Then Ava turned to me.
“But that’s not why I hit him.”
The room seemed to pull inward.
I asked, “What do you mean?”
Ava looked toward the stairs.
“Because Tommy is still up there.”
For one second, nobody understood.
Then Wade stopped groaning.
That was what made the truth land.
Not Diane’s gasp.
Not Fen’s sob.
Not Russ swearing under his breath.
Wade’s silence.
I moved first.
Diane followed behind me, her wedding dress dragging through dust and crushed flower petals on the floor.
Russ stepped in front of Wade when Wade tried to rise.
It was the first decent thing I had seen him do all day.
“Sit down,” Russ said.
Wade tried to speak, but his wired jaw turned the words into a thick sound.
His father looked toward the front door.
I saw it.
So did Ava.
“Don’t let him leave,” she said.
Diane’s phone buzzed on the coffee table.
Fen picked it up without thinking.
The screen showed a saved voicemail from the school office, timestamped three months earlier at 4:08 p.m.
The preview read: Ava has asked to speak with you about Tommy and home safety concerns.
Diane saw it.
Her knees buckled.
Fen caught her by the elbow.
“I thought she was being dramatic,” Diane whispered.
Ava did not look at her mother.
She kept staring up the stairs.
At the top landing, the hallway was too quiet.
There were still wedding petals on the carpet from where people must have come and gone earlier in the day.
One bedroom door was shut.
On the outside of it was the latch from the photo.
In person, it looked worse.
Pictures can make cruelty feel distant.
Hardware makes it practical.
A metal hasp.
A cheap sliding lock.
Four bright screws.
A solution, somebody had probably called it.
I reached for the latch.
From the other side, something tapped once.
Then a little boy whispered, “Ava?”
