Chapter 7 - The Night the Lights Went Out
The power failed during dinner.
One moment, Zoe was arguing that broccoli looked like tiny haunted trees.
The next, our kitchen went black.
Her fork clattered.
Grace reached for her immediately.
My father stayed seated.
“Nico?”
“Backup system’s coming.”
Emergency lights glowed along the hallway.
For three seconds, nobody moved.
Then a phone rang.
Not Dad’s.
Grace’s.
She glanced at the screen and went pale.
“What is it?” Mara asked.
She had joined us after a long day reviewing records.
Grace handed her the phone.
A message appeared beneath an unfamiliar number.
You should have stayed quiet.
Mara photographed the screen with her own device.
My father rose slowly.
I recognized the expression settling over his face.
It was the one people feared.
Then Zoe reached for his hand.
“Is it a storm?”
He looked down at her.
“No, sweetheart.”
“Then why are you making your storm face?”
His fingers relaxed.
I watched him make a choice.
He sat again.
“Nico, contact the police.”
There were no whispered orders. No men rushing toward waiting cars.
Just that sentence.
The outage turned out to affect our block. A damaged utility cable had failed. The timing was coincidence, but the message wasn’t.
Mara told us that investigators would trace what they could.
Grace and Zoe stayed overnight because everyone was shaken.
I made a bed for Zoe on my floor.
She arranged her stuffed rabbit beside the pillow.
“Is your dad mad at my mommy?”
“No.”
“He looks mad.”
“He’s scared.”
She considered that.
“Grown-ups should say scared when they mean scared.”
I pulled the blanket around her.
“You’re pretty smart.”
“I’m almost six.”
After she fell asleep, I found Dad in the hallway.
He was sitting on the floor outside my room.
His cane rested beside him.
“What are you doing?”
“Being nearby.”
I sat next to him.
For a while, we listened to Zoe breathe through the open doorway.
“Was Uncle Victor always bad?”
Dad rubbed his jaw.
“He was my little brother before he was anything else. I kept seeing that boy when I should have been looking at the man.”
“Like you kept seeing Mom alive when you didn’t look at her pictures?”
His eyes filled.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Something like that.”
The next day, Victor released another story through someone willing to repeat it.
This time, it was about my father.
There were old photographs. Names. Businesses. Allegations that made parents at school stop speaking when I passed.
Some of it was false.
Some wasn’t.
At lunch, a girl moved her tray away from mine.
“My mom says your dad belongs in prison.”
My face burned.
I wanted to say something cruel.
Instead, I carried my tray to the library.
Sister Margaret found me there.
“Would you like to talk?”
“Would it make him a good person?”
She sat beside me.
“No.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“It might help you understand that his choices don’t determine your worth.”
I stared at my sandwich.
“Everybody looks at me like they do.”
“Everybody can be wrong.”
That afternoon, my father arrived without the long line of SUVs.
Just one car.
He walked to the school steps himself.
I didn’t move.
“I read what they’re saying,” I told him.
He nodded.
“What’s true?”
“We’ll talk at home.”
“No. You’ll talk now.”
Parents slowed around us.
My father looked at them, then back at me.
“I used fear to get things I wanted,” he said. “I let men do harm because it benefited me. I’m responsible for that.”
I began shaking.
“Then why should I believe you’re different?”
He swallowed.
“You shouldn’t have to believe it yet.”
He held out his hand without reaching for mine.
“You can watch what I do.”
I took it.
Across the street, a photographer raised a camera.
May you like
For once, my father didn’t look toward the lens.
He kept looking at me.
