23
It took Ben a good five minutes to continue. Through his Snowcone buzz, the feeling of that night—raw and surreal, oppressive and wild, like an electrical storm during a summer heat wave—came back to him. The vision of his father’s bloodied body on the kitchen floor, the weight of knowing that the police were coming, and that someone needed to tell Mom before they did. And knowing that person had to be him, because Tobias was downstairs securing the house and talking to the police, and Aiden was only eight, and Cassie was only sixteen, and Will was away at law school. And even though his skin felt raw and flayed, as if it didn’t even belong to him, and his gorge rose every time he thought of what he’d seen in the kitchen, he’d trudged upstairs, stomach churning, the walls wavering as i
