My father looked at Jesse and said, “You could have called.”
The room went still.
Jesse lowered his eyes.
“Yes.”
“Not at first,” my father said. “I understand that. Maybe I even believe it. But later? Ten years later? Fifteen?”
Jesse’s throat moved.
“Yes.”
“Your mother slept in that chair by the front window for six months.”
My mother turned from the sink.
“Paul.”
“No,” my father said, not harshly, but firmly. “He needs to know.”
“I do know,” Jesse said.
My father’s hand struck the table once, not hard enough to frighten anyone, but hard enough to release something that had been trapped for two decades.
“You don’t,” he said. “You don’t know what it was like to identify every body they found within fifty miles. You don’t know what it was like to watch your mother stop singing. You don’t know what it was like to raise your sister while half of us was buried without a grave.”
