My six-year-old nephew dragged his broken leg across seven blocks of pavement to reach my porch, with his starving three-year-old sister clinging to his shirt. I was fixing a loose hinge when I heard scraping on the steps and turned to see Drew crawling toward me, pale, shaking, and whispering, “She locked us downstairs again.” I called 911 before I even understood the whole story. But when he told me about Reena’s punishment room, I knew my brother had died believing a terrible lie.
Aaron had joked through most of the meeting, tapping his pen against the conference table and saying, “Fine by me. I married Rebecca, not her real estate.”
Now he looked at me as though I had tricked him into revealing his character.