The first sound was the door hitting the wall.
It was not the neat little click of someone checking on me, or the creak of an old house settling at night.
It was a violent crack that tore through the dark and shot me upright before my mind understood my body was already afraid.
The hallway light cut across my bedroom floor, thin and pale, and for one breath I saw only the shape in the doorway.
Then Aaron stepped in.
My brother had always known how to make a room smaller.
He did it with his shoulders, with his voice, with the certainty of someone who had never been required to explain himself.
That night he did not bother with words first.
His hand went into my hair, hard and fast, and he dragged me out of bed before my feet could find the floor.
The nightstand caught my
shoulder.
The lamp went down.
The bulb burst against the floor, and the little pop of it felt absurdly small compared with the sound I made trying to breathe.
“Get up,” Aaron said.
I grabbed his wrist with both hands.
I remember the heat of his skin, the smell of beer and cologne, the rough edge of my blanket twisted around my legs.
I remember thinking that this was not an argument anymore.
This was the thing I had spent years telling myself he would never actually do.
Then he pulled again.
The hallway came toward me sideways.
My cheek hit the wall, and the framed family photo beside us dropped, shattered, and scattered our smiling faces across the runner.
That was when I heard my father laugh.
Douglas Kensington stood in his bedroom doorway, half in shadow, wearing plaid pajama pants and an old college T-shirt from a school
