At the end of the last installment, Will thought, Gone wrong. This day’s gone wrong.
If only his day had gotten better from there…but sometimes they don’t.

Despite that, Will realized he was hungry. His nostrils twitched at the smell of raw onion when he pulled the door open, this time careful not to let it slam behind him. Will was surprised not to find his mother in the kitchen, but supper was started, and he heard her rattling jars in the cellar. He hopped onto the counter by the sink. From that spot, he could wash his hands, like he was supposed to, and see what was cooking, too.

Will noticed the wind blowing harder outside. It sounded like screaming. Then his mother was too. Sounds of glass breaking and wood splintering and feet clamoring and Lucien’s yelling and his mother’s shrieking vibrated up from the basement. The door trembled from the bedlam below. He heard some of the words Lucien and his mother spat at each other.

“Give it here,” Lucien demanded.

“Dirty drunk.”

Another crash.

“I’ll kill ya, bitch.”

“Let go a’me.”

Will felt the house shake as feet beat their way up the basement stairs, the sound of his mother’s heels followed by heavy boots. She pushed through the narrow door and it slammed back hard, straining on its hinges. She hesitated, then turned toward the front of the house, but she’d missed her chance to run. Lucien grabbed her and dragged her backward. He slapped her and her head snapped to the side, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth contorted. Lucien hit her again and again, the shape of his sausage fingers rising on her cheeks. She cursed him, but stopped pulling away, given up on getting away. Again.

Neither his mother nor Lucien saw Will sitting on the counter, and he watched it all as if it were in slow motion, like at the movies when the projector slowed way down. With each swing of Lucien’s arm, Will saw the hundreds of swings of Lucien’s arm that he had witnessed over the years the man had been married to his mother.

Will’s mind flashed through the images Lucien had left there—being thrown across the yard and his blood melting the snow he’d landed in when his teeth broke and punched through his lip, his mother splayed out on the sitting room floor with her nose bleeding into her new rag rug, Scout’s agonized cries when Lucien blinded and bloodied him with a board run through with long nails, Will dodging the same weapon while he yelled for Lucien to stop, and Lucien kicking Tuck so hard that he broke the dog’s back. As if it were happening again, Will heard the crack of breaking bone, saw Tuck land in a heap, and something snapped into place in his mind—his mother could not, or would not, ever make this stop—but he would. No more, he thought. No more.

He shifted, readying to jump down, to do something, though he wasn’t sure what that would be. His leg bumped the cast iron fry pan on the counter beside him. Brown gray, and rough on the outside, the inside shone with the slick of oil from years of frying countless chickens and endless strips of bacon. There was a half-chopped onion on the deeply grooved cutting board next to the pan with bits of onion stuck to the mottled metal of the knife blade. The knife handle was smooth, the color of honey. The other half of the onion tipped beside the knife, cut side up, the rings even, perfect circles within circles within circles. Will stared, his mother’s cries filling the kitchen, then his hands reached out.

The weight of the pan almost pulled Will off the counter when he swung it. It shoved him sideways when it hit the right side of Lucien’s head with a deep thunk. The blow knocked the pan from Will’s hands and it crashed to the floor, landing hard on its edge, denting the linoleum, then clattering from side to side, until it settled flat. During the seconds the skillet was coming to rest, Lucien hung in the air, swaying, his head cocked oddly. Then his knees buckled. Will looked down between his dusty boots at the Lucien pile on the floor. The screaming went silent, except for the wind.

His mother regarded Will through puffy, red eyes.

“Oh my God, Willard, why’d you go and do that? When he wakes up, he’ll kill us both.”

Will looked at her, then down at the floor. “Had to,” he said.

He slid off the counter, reached for the pan, and placed it back beside the cutting board.

As he and his mother stood looking at Lucien, blood began to trickle from his right ear. They watched it trace a line down his square jaw, then drip onto the floor.

“Well, oh, oh boy. I guess we’re leavin’ then,” she said. “You stay here and watch him. Run quick and tell me if he moves.”

She ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs toward the bedrooms.

After clearing Lucien with a big step, Will inched toward the kitchen door and pushed it partly open. He heard doors and drawers opening and closing. His gaze clocked back and forth—from Lucien on the floor in front of him, to over his shoulder toward the stairs. When Will’s mother came down the stairs, she placed two suitcases by the front door, then turned without a glance at him and went up again.