In Harmony

“And then? Canada, Daniel?”

“Look, Regina, if you wanted to stay in New York so badly, you should’ve stayed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Their voices roamed downstairs, from the kitchen into the den. I shut the door.

Isaac ran a hand through his hair. “They won’t come in here?”

“They never have before.”

“Canada?” he asked.

“I don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Footsteps came up the stairs. I could hear my mother muttering to herself between deep sniffs. We

held our breaths as she went past my room and slammed the door to the master bedroom.

“That means Dad’s sleeping in the den,” I whispered.

We waited for a nerve-wracking forty-five minutes, to ensure my dad was asleep, then I snuck downstairs to make sure the coast was clear. The den door was closed. The silvery-green light of a TV on in a dark room glowed along the crack beneath.

I crept back upstairs to take Isaac by the hand and lead him down. We hurried on silent feet through the dark house, not daring to breathe. At the back door of the kitchen, I kissed him quickly.

“I love you,” I whispered, disarming the security system.

“I love you,” he whispered back. “Never doubt.”

“Never.”

He slipped into the darkness, an inky shadow moving across the backyard. I shut the door, rearmed the security panel, then rested my head against the cool glass pane. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“What are you doing?”

A little scream burst out of me on a current of heart-stopping fear. I spun around to face my father, in an undershirt and slacks looking tired. A glass in his hand, something amber with two ice cubes floating in it. His drawn, tired face morphed from confusion to dawning realization to anger, like a spectrum.

“What are you doing?” he asked again, slowly enunciating each word. He rushed to the kitchen window and looked outside. “Who’s that? Who was here?”

“No one, Dad,” I said. “You and Mom were yelling and it woke me up. I came down to see…”

My reasons disintegrated under my father’s hard stare.

“It was him, wasn’t it? The boy from the junkyard.”

“Stop calling him that. And no—”

“Why were you messing with the alarm?”

Before I could answer, my father seized me by the upper arm and dragged me away from the window. I gasped at the strength of his grip. He’d never grabbed me this hard before.

“Dad, you’re hurting me.”

He sat me down on the living room couch—hard—and stood over me.

“I have had it,” he said, his face turning red. “I told you, you’re not to see this boy. And now I find him here? In my house?” He craned his neck and shouted over his shoulder. “Regina, get down here.” He turned back to me. “Give me your phone.”

“I don’t have it.”