Keith didn’t have a chance, but he made Dad work for his victory. The next morning, Dad had his revenge. I don’t believe he thought of Keith’s forced confession that way, but Keith’s expression told me that he did.
“How do I get out of this family,” Marcus muttered to me as we watched. I sympathized. He had to share a room with Keith, and the two of them, only a year apart in age, fought all the time. Now things would be worse.
Keith is Cory’s favorite. If you asked her, she would say she didn’t have a favorite, but she does. She babies him and lets him get away with skipping chores, a little lying, a little stealing… . Maybe that’s why Keith thinks when he screws up, it’s okay.
This morning’s sermon was on the ten commandments with extra emphasis on “Honor thy father and thy mother,” and “Thou shalt not steal.” I think Dad got rid of a lot of anger and frustration, preaching that sermon. Keith, tall, stone-faced, looking older than his thirteen years, kept his anger.
I could see him keeping it inside, holding it down, choking on it.
MONDAY, AUGUST 18, 2025
Dad went out looking for Keith today. He even called in the police. He says he doesn’t know how we’ll afford the fee, but he’s scared. The longer Keith is gone, the more likely he is to get hurt or killed.
Marcus says he thinks Keith went looking for the guys who beat him up. I don’t believe it. Not even Keith would go looking for five guys— or even one guy— with nothing but a BB gun.
Cory’s even more upset than Dad. She’s scared and jumpy and sick to her stomach, and she keeps crying. I talked her into going back to bed, then taught her classes myself. I’ve done that four or five times before when she was sick, so it wasn’t too weird for the kids. I just used Cory’s lesson plans, and during the first part of the day, I partnered the older kids with my kindergartners and let everyone get a taste of teaching or learning from someone different. Some of my students are my age and older, and a couple of these— Aura Moss and Michael Talcott— got up and left. They knew I understood the work. I got the last of my high school work and tests out of the way almost two years ago.
Since then I’ve done uncredited (free) college work with Dad. Michael and Aura know all that, but they’re much too grown up to learn anything from the likes of me. The hell with them. It’s a pity, though, that my Curtis has to have a brother like Michael— not that any of us gets to choose our brothers.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2025
No sign of Keith. I think Cory has gone into mourning for him. I handled classes again today, and Dad went out searching again. He came home looking exhausted tonight, and Cory wept and shouted at him.
“You didn’t try!” she said with me and all three of my brothers looking on. We’d all come to see whether Dad had brought Keith back. “You could have found him if you’d tried!”
Dad tried to go to her, but she backed away, still shouting: “If it were your precious Lauren out there alone, you would have found her by now! You don’t care about Keith.”
She’s never said anything like that before.
I mean, we were always Cory and Lauren. She never asked me to call her “mother,” and I never thought to do it. I always knew she was my stepmother. But still… I always loved her. It mystified me that Keith was her favorite, but it didn’t make me love her any less. I was her kid, but not her kid. Not quite. Not really. But I always thought she loved me.
Dad shooed us all off to bed. He quieted Cory and took her back to their room. A few minutes ago, he came to see me.
“She didn’t mean it,” he said. “She loves you as though you were her daughter, Lauren.”
I just looked at him.
“She wants you to know she’s sorry.”
I nodded, and after a few more assurances, he went.
Is she sorry? I don’t think so.
Did she mean it. She did. Oh, yes, she meant it.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 2025
Keith came back last night.
He just walked into the house during dinner, as though he’d been outside playing football instead of gone since Saturday. And this time he looked fine.
Not a mark on him. He was wearing a clean new set of clothing— even new shoes. All of it was of much better quality than he had when he left, and much more expensive than we could have afforded.
He still had the BB gun until Dad took it away from him and smashed it.
Keith wouldn’t say where he’d been or how he’d gotten the new things, so Dad beat him bloody.
I’ve only seen Dad like that once before— when I was 12. Cory tried to stop him, tried to pull him off Keith, screamed at him in English, then in Spanish, then without words.
Gregory threw up on the floor, and Bennett started to cry. Marcus backed away from the whole scene, and slipped out of the house.
Then it was over.
Keith was crying like a two-year-old and Cory was holding him. Dad stood over both of them, looking dazed.
I followed Marcus out the back door and stumbled and almost fell down the back steps. I didn’t know what I was doing. Marcus wasn’t around. I sat on the steps in the warm darkness and let my body shake and hurt and vomit in helpless empathy with Keith.
Then I guess I passed out.
I came to sometime later with Marcus shaking me and whispering my name.
I got up with Marcus hanging on to my arm, trying to steady me, and I got to my bedroom.
“Let me sleep in here,” he whispered once I was sitting on my bed, dazed and still in pain. “I’ll sleep on the
