I AM SORRY

How so?”

Mike’s frown digs deep trenches into his brow. I think it’s basic human nature and concern that causes me to want to reach over and smooth them away. “Living at home—if I could use that word because it wasn’t a home at all—was…it was…not fun. It was the opposite of fun. My father… well, I’d liken him to the devil, but that would be doing Satan a serious disservice. I don’t think the devil himself could be as bad as my father was. I saw him do terrible things to other people. Other men. But never women. Unless that woman was my mother, though he never hit her. He was too controlled for that. Instead, he controlled her in every other way possible. She was like a puppet, a zombie, doing what he wanted. She was strung out on prescription meds to make her biddable, but also probably because it was the only way she could survive getting through the day. I imagine she thought about killing herself just to escape. All the time. She never intervened in my father’s business, and to her