Page 101 of Rescue

“I’m sorry. I thought it was better.”

“To think she abandoned us? To believe that she didn’t want us?”

“She could have killed your brother, Daltrey—”

“It would have been better to know the truth!”

“Dalt,” I begin, but he cuts me off.

“Don’t you try to defend him! How can you even look at him?”

“Daltrey, please,” Dad says. “You don’t understand.”

“Of course I don’t!” he yells. “Because you’ve been telling me that my mother didn’t want me since I was five years old!”

“I never told you that.”

“No,Idid,” Reed says, and his voice scares me. I’ve never heard him so broken. So lost. “Because you let me believe that. Because I had to step in and take care of them after she left because you were so useless—”

“Reed.”

“You used to sit in your room for hours. Hours. And I had to make them lunch and try to explain what had happened whenever Daltrey asked me why she wasn’t coming home. And Lennon wouldn’t talk and—” He looks at me, and his face crumples. “You wouldn’t talk. For weeks.”

“Because I thought it was my fault,” I say. “If I wouldn’t have told the police what happened, they wouldn’t have made her go away.”

And then Reed is crying, huge gulping sobs, and I’ve never seen him cry, not ever. He was always the strong one, my big older brother, who took care of all of us.

“Son.” My dad goes to him, but before he can lift a hand, Reed throws a fist in his face, hard enough to make him stumble backward.

“I hate you.” His voice is low and every bit as sad as it is angry. “You lied to us for years.”

“I did the best I—”

“Shut up!” Cash yells. “You didn’t do the best you could! You kicked her out instead of helping her! You shut down after she left. You lied!”

“I loved her.”

The room goes still.

My dad hangs his head. “I loved her so much. She was everything. I tried to help her, I would have done anything to help her.” He looks up at us, begging us to understand. “I would have moved heaven and earth for that woman… until she hurt your brother. I couldn’t let that happen again. I couldn’t. I told her she had to get help or she couldn’t be near you. What else could I do?”

Years ago, back in California, my dad was in a band. He played drums, like Reed. Just as they started to break out, my mom got pregnant. When people write stories about us, they always point this out. That my dad was forced to give up his dreams for us. That’s why he pushed us so hard, the theory goes. To live through us what he missed out on. But maybe it didn’t happen quite like that. Maybe he didn’t give up his dream for his kids and my mother. Maybe we were his dream.

I look up at my dad. He has tears in his eyes, and his face is already red where Reed just punched him. And for the first time I think that maybe I really understand him. “You chose us. Even though you loved her.”

He looks over at me, surprised. “Of course I did. You’re my boys.”

No one seems to know what to say after that. Reed has stopped crying. Daltrey is sitting on the couch, his head in his hands. And Cash looks completely bewildered, like he has no idea what just happened.

“You should have told us,” Reed says again. “You shouldn’t have lied.”

“I’m sorry,” Dad says. “I truly am. I didn’t know what to do. I was so lost after she left. I tried—” His voice cracks. “I tried, I really did.”

If we were a different family, now might be the time to hug. But we’ve never been those people. I look over at my brothers. “We need to stop doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“We put all these walls up between us, we don’t talk. We never say how we really feel. The only way we know how to communicate is when we’re fighting.” No one can meet my eyes. “The only time we really connect in a positive way is through our music. And as great as it is to play together, as much as we all love it, that’s not enough. We have to change this.” I turn to my dad. “You should have told me about what happened. Especially after I started to show signs of being seriously fucked up.”