Shall We Begin?

Then my mother began to scream.

It wasn’t the calculated weeping she used to steer a room. It was raw — the shriek of a cornered animal watching a door swing shut.

“Avery! Please!” Mascara flooded down her face as an officer walked her toward the door, reciting her rights over the top of her. “Please — we’re your family!”

I looked at the woman who bore me. Who had sat on a plane with a glass of wine and let her own father be carried out of his home in a canvas jacket so she could have the house.

“No,” I said. “I’m just the unpaid help.”

They took my screaming parents and my weeping brother out into the freezing dark, red and blue lights slashing through the falling snow. I turned to look at my grandfather.