On the porch, the screen door banged open.
Ray stepped in. “What’s going on in here?”
Diane wiped her face quickly, but Gabe no longer cared about maintaining the old arrangements.
“Did you know?” he asked.
Ray frowned. “Know what?”
“What he did to Mom. What he did to Ellie.”
The silence that followed answered before Ray could.
His father’s face hardened, then sagged around the edges.
“I knew your mama hated him,” Ray said. “I knew something wasn’t right. But—”
“But what?”
Ray looked at the floor. “I didn’t know how bad.”
“You didn’t want to know.”
“That’s enough,” Ray snapped, some old reflex reasserting itself. “You don’t get to judge everything you don’t understand.”
Gabe took one step toward him. “My sister disappeared from his house, and you let that man sit at our table for fourteen years.”
Ray’s voice rose too. “He was my father!”
