Page 90 of What We Become

“Why are they even called ‘episodes’?” He laughs, and it’s all edges. “Like it’s a TV show. Season one, episode one: the kid kills his—” He stops. Swallows it. Looks down at our hands like he’s surprised they’re still connected.

“She said sixteen,” I repeat. “So I’m asking you. Is that when it started? When you killed your dad?”

He’s quiet for a long time. Ten seconds. Twenty. I count them the way I counted Sage’s breaths behind the oxygen mask, and I let him, because Gloria was right about one thing—he trusts me, and I’m going to earn that retroactively if it kills me.

“Yeah,” he says finally. “That was the first time my brain let him out.”

“Okay. Want to tell me what you remember?”

His eyes shift to the bottles again.

“My father wasn’t important,” he says. “Not really. He wasn’t some criminal mastermind running an empire from a volcano. He was just mean enough to make people confuse fear with power.”

“What did he run?”

“Small crews. Collections. Stolen goods. Enough low-level crime to keep money coming in and enough violence to stop anyone asking where it came from.” His thumb moves restlessly against the side of my hand. “Dennis and Gene worked for him.”

“As in two of your dads?”

“They weren’t my dads then. They were his muscle. Henchmen. Lackeys. Minions.” His mouth twists. “Minions if minions wore cheap suits and broke fingers instead of stealing the moon.”

The joke arrives, but it doesn’t lift anything. It sits between us with the pills and the confession.

“They hated him,” Milo continues. “Everyone hated him. But he knew where their families lived. Who owed money. Who had something to lose. He was very good at making men feel trapped.”

“And Gloria?”

“He thought she belonged to him too.”

The words are light, but his face isn’t.

“He hit her?”

“He hit everyone.” Milo stares at the table. “Her. Me. My brother and sister. Dennis and Gene whenever one of them got between us. He liked making people watch. Said it taught the rest of us how to behave.”

My grip tightens on his fingers, and I make myself ease it.

“What happened?”

Milo’s knee starts bouncing beneath the table. Fast enough to shake the floorboards.

“One night, he had Gene down. Gloria tried to stop him, so he turned on her.” His voice flattens. “I remember her mouth bleeding. I remember him knocking her into a table. Then I remember hitting him with the first thing I could reach.”

He swallows.

“I don’t remember picking it up. I just remember swinging it. Then he was down and I kept going.”

“How long?”

“Until Dennis pulled me off.”

The security monitor changes feeds. Empty porch. Empty driveway. Empty trees.

“He was dead?”

“Extremely.”

The answer comes automatically. Milo’s standard method of making horror ridiculous enough to hold.