But the ploy hadn’t fooled our dad today. He’d come home from work with so much tension ricocheting around inside him that I thought he should have sounded like a beehive. Instead, he sounded like one of those bad guys on TV that hold up banks with masks on their faces—and as a result, my brother looked like one of those dogs that live at rest stops on the highway. I wouldn’t forgive my dad for reducing him to that. Not ever. Trey seemed to have shrunk—so much so that I thought I might be taller than him at last. But I knew that was only a for-now kind of thing. He’d grow back to his normal size once my dad slammed out of the house and took off, tires squealing, in his fancy black car.
Right now, though, there was only razor-sharp anger and ugly bullet-words that seemed to be striking my brother from the inside out. I wanted to run around the table and hit my dad’s chest until he turned his wrath on me. It was okay for me to cry—I could take it—but I was afraid of what would happen to Trey if those shimmering tears ever fell from their perch onto his flushed cheeks. They would hurt him much more than any of my father’s words.
We’d been well trained by now, though. We knew to sit still as statues while my dad ranted and raved. Still as the green soldier on the pedestal in the park. Still as the air when my dad’s anger ran out and all we could hear was pieces of our souls drifting to the gouged linoleum like shards of shattered shell.
“You did this,” my dad screamed, turning his bile on my mother, who stood clutching the back of a chair on the other side of Trey. His voice sneered as he continued. “You sissified him with your cooing and fawning and now we’re stuck with a mama’s boy that doesn’t have the guts to eat his ve-ge-ta-bles. . . .” He yelled the last word right into Trey’s ear and I saw my brother flinch, bits of zucchini still stuck to his face. I looked to my mom, but there was no salvation there. Only a grown-up reflection of my brother’s gut-sick fear.
So I did what I always did when my dad went all Wicked Witch of the West on us. I locked eyes with Trey, whether he could see me or not, and designed stuffed animals in my mind. I was on animal number three when I heard the door slam and my dad’s car peel away. I wondered if the stuffed animal in Trey’s mind was blood-red too.
Shayla was excited that she’d had two mornings today—the first one with the bright-red sunrise, the shower, and the strawberry jam, and the second one without the sunrise and shower, but with more strawberry jam. Strawberry jam was a big item in Shayla’s little life. I was only grateful that she’d fallen back to sleep for a couple hours between her two breakfasts. Toward the middle of our “second morning,” we ventured out of our new home and into the streets of Kandern. A short walk brought us to the Hauptstrasse, a street lined with small stores and restaurants that ran the length of the town. I’d read on the Internet that Kandern was actually classified as a city, the smallest city in Germany by some accounts, but the narrowness of the streets and the smallness of the buildings gave it that barely-larger-than-a-village feel I found quaint and endearing.
I decided that if Kandern were human, it would be a middle-aged man with a big, rounded belly, weather-chafed cheeks, and a hesitant smile. He’d be wearing tuxedo pants below the waist and a plaid shirt above it, equal parts sophistication and down-home charm. Kandern was a farmer looking for a banquet and hoping he’d fit in when he got there.
Shayla and I walked up the street hand in hand, pausing to stare into storefronts at homemade pottery and thick-heeled shoes, then halting again for Shayla to run her fingers under a fountain’s waterspout. Though the rest of the town seemed deserted for a Saturday, one plot of real estate was bustling with activity. A farmer’s market filled the small square, and stands brimming with fresh fruit and vegetables begged me to spend some of the money Gus had loaned us yesterday on an apple for Shayla. I listened to