It is a terrible thing, sometimes, to speak the exact truth into a person who has built herself against it. Her face didn’t collapse. Women like my mother don’t collapse in public if they can help it. But something in her posture gave way, as if an internal brace had snapped.
My father tried a different angle.
“Kairen,” he said, voice rough now, “you made your point. Let’s take a breath and discuss this privately.”
That was almost enough to make Helena laugh out loud.
“Privately?” she said. “Malcolm, you evicted your son publicly.”
He looked at her with the helpless resentment of a man realizing the powerful witness in front of him is not neutral and never was.
Jace stepped forward then, hands spread slightly, aiming for brotherhood because all his other tools had failed.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. We were jerks. Fine. But we’re still family. You don’t have to do all this.”
I looked at him and saw every cheap joke, every smirk over my uniform, every time he called me basement boy in front of friends, every time he borrowed money from my mother while mocking the only person in the house who actually paid his way.
“All this?” I asked. “You mean leave with my own property?”