in the tin at the back of the top drawer where he kept old batteries and rubber bands and twisty ties and paper clips.
I finished the drawing anyway and put it up on the fridge with a basket-of-fruit magnet. Then I waited for him to come home. I could always tell by the way he closed the back door if he was happy or mad. Today he’d slammed it so hard that the glasses in the cupboard rattled and I was glad I’d done something that would—maybe—make him just a bit less angry. Actually, it was more about making me less scared than making him less angry.
Dad went straight to his office before I could tell him about John Wayne, and I could hear him fiddling around for a while. I was trying to get up the courage to interrupt him when he said, “Who’s been in my desk?” He kind of growled it more than just saying it.
I could tell Mom was trying to be soothing when she said from the kitchen, “Just Shelby. She was looking for an eraser, I think. Where is that white one, by the way? We looked through every drawer in the house for it this afternoon!” Her voice sounded jittery.
My father stepped out of his museum-clean office and saw me leaning against the arm of the couch. I’d bumped into it backing away from his door.
“You’ve been going through my things?” he asked.
His voice was quiet. But it was that thunder-behind-the-clouds kind of quiet that made me want to cover my ears and sing “La-la-la” as loud as I could. I figured if I made enough noise, I wouldn’t be able to hear it when the thunder really got close. The other option was running really fast and really far. But the rule was no screaming and no running in the house. So I had to just kind of stand there and be scared and hope he wouldn’t notice and call me a coward. There was usually another word right before coward, but it made me feel cringy to even think it in my mind.
“Answer me,” Dad demanded. His voice sounded like barbed wire. The backs of my legs were up against the couch. I couldn’t have run even if I’d tried. “Have you been in my stuff?”
I fought the tears. I fought them and fought them. I tried to sing happy songs in my mind, but the stupid tears came anyway and I knew they’d make Dad go from angry bull to exploding bomb—like in the Road Runner cartoons. “I . . . I was making you a present. . . .”
And that’s as far as I got. His fingers closed around my arm so hard that my legs gave out. I tried to pry his hand away, but he just held on tighter. I could see Mom peeking around the doorway, but she didn’t say anything. She never did. “You will not touch my things again,” my dad hissed at me. I could feel his spit hitting my face and smell old coffee on his breath. “If you touch them again, I’ll give you a real reason to cry.” His fingers tightened some more around my arm as his eyes squinted and slashed.
“Jim?” My mom had found her voice. A squeaky voice, but a voice.
Dad let me go so suddenly that I fell into the arm of the couch and slid to the floor in a humiliated tangle of limbs and loss and misery. It was my fault. I had made him mad with my dumb picture. I knew that he worked really hard and needed everything to be tidy and quiet when he got home. I was stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Keep her out of my office, Gail,” my father barked. He turned like a soldier in a parade and marched out of the living room.
It was well before dawn when I heard the door of my bedroom open.
“Shelby?” The clear, high voice close to my ear sounded like it meant business. “Shelby, you awake?”
I tried not to groan and pried an eyelid up just long enough to ascertain three facts: I was in a German apartment, it was just after four, and Shayla was looking way too wide-awake for this ungodly hour. By my calculations, she’d gotten just seven hours of sleep, which was roughly ten hours less than I’d hoped for. Her long afternoon nap the day before was coming back to bite us both in the you-know-what. Jet lag