Chapter 5 - What Mom Had Been Asking Ethan to Say
The next morning, Ethan woke up hungry and embarrassed.
Children are strange that way.
A few hours earlier, he had been terrified.
Now he wanted waffles and kept apologizing because he had cried in front of me.
I told him to stop apologizing.
Dad didn’t question him like a witness.
That impressed me.
He asked ordinary things.
Whether he wanted syrup.
Whether he had homework.
Whether his soccer cleats still fit.
Later, when Ethan was drawing at the dining table, I sat beside him.
He was using the same green paint we had at Mom’s house.
My throat tightened when I saw it.
“What were you painting yesterday?”
“A dinosaur.”
“Did Gary get mad about the paint?”
Ethan shook his head.
“Not first.”
“What happened first?”
He pressed his brush against the paper too hard.
“Mom told me Dad was coming.”
I waited.
“Then Gary said I knew what to tell him.”
“What were you supposed to tell Dad?”
“That I hate sleeping there.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Anything else?”
Ethan’s voice got quieter.
“That Dad yells when I wake him up.”
“Does he?”
“Sometimes he says, ‘Buddy, go back to bed.’”
I almost laughed.
Not because any of it was funny.
Because I finally understood how ordinary words could be reshaped.
Did Dad yell?
Maybe once.
Was Ethan nervous before visits?
Yes.
Did he sometimes ask to stay with Mom?
Probably.
None of those things automatically meant what Mom had been saying they meant.
Then Ethan added, “Gary said I had to sound scared.”
I put down the paintbrush.
“What did Mom say?”
Ethan thought about it.
“She said Gary was just trying to help.”
That answer hurt more than I expected.
I wanted Mom to be innocent in some clean way.
Afraid of Gary.
Unaware.
Manipulated.
Anything that would let me split the adults into one bad person and one victim.
Instead, Ethan gave me something harder.
Mom knew Gary was pressuring him.
Maybe she didn’t know everything.
Maybe yesterday had gone farther than she expected.
But she knew enough to call it help.
Dad’s phone buzzed.
A message from Mom.
He showed it to me because my name was in it.
Tell Brooke to come home. Ethan can stay until five. We need to keep this from getting uglier.
I read it twice.
Not: Is Ethan okay?
Not: I need to see him.
Not: Gary is gone.
Keep this from getting uglier.
I typed from my own phone.
Is Gary still there?
Mom answered almost immediately.
May you like
That isn’t the issue.
And that was when I knew Gary was only part of the issue.
