“Four weeks,” Tess murmured. “It ain’t enough time to change a person’s mind. Lord knows a decade weren’t enough to change your father’s, and now he’s—”
“Captured,” Patrick cut in.
“Dead,” Tess said forcefully, white knuckles clutching the back of a chair. “There ain’t a hope you’ll find him still alive, Pat. You need to stop pretendin’—”
“You’re able to abandon him so easily.” Patrick’s fists shook with the urge to be buried in a wall. But he spoke evenly. “Not me.”
No, not Patrick. He felt his father knocking at the insides of his skull. Other people had a tendency to forget what Patrick couldn’t when it came to John Colson: the cast-off parts turned into toy trains, the easy jokes, and a hand wide enough to span two of his. In the mornings, his father would submerge his head in a bu
