Prologue
Finlay - Age 7
The baseball wasn’t supposed to go that far. I just wanted to show Adair how hard I could throw now. The air was thick with that heavy summer heat that made everything feel slower, except the ball.
It shot off my hand like lightning and crash!, the sound was louder than I thought glass could be.
I froze, glove still half up, mouth open.
Adair’s eyes went wide. “Fin,” he said, voice a little higher than usual.
“Oh no,” I whispered, and my stomach did a weird flip.
The kitchen window was a spiderweb of cracks, the baseball nowhere in sight, just a jagged hole in the center.
Then came the sound we both dreaded, boots on the back steps. Our dad’s boots.
He opened the door, looked at the window, then at us. He didn’t yell right away, which was worse.
“Which one of you did it?” he said, quiet and calm. That calm made my knees feel funny.
I wanted to tell the truth. I really did. But the words got stuck in my throat. I could feel Adair looking at me.
Then he said, “It was me.”
I whipped around. “What? No -”
He shook his head, real small, like he didn’t want me to say anything else.
Dad looked at him for a long time, then nodded. “I appreciate your honesty,” he said. Then he turned to me. “And you, try to be more careful. You never think ahead, Finlay.”
That stung. Even with Adair taking the blame, I was still the one in trouble somehow.
Later, after Dad patched the window with cardboard, we sat on our beds. I kept glancing over at him. He was reading a comic book like nothing had happened.
“Why’d you say it was you?” I asked.
He didn’t look up. “Didn’t matter.”
“It did! You got in trouble!”
“Not really,” he said. “He just talked at me.”
“Still,” I said. “You shouldn’t have.”
He shrugged. “You’d have been scared.”
I threw a pillow at him, and he caught it without even looking away from his book.
“You make it too easy to mess up,” I said.
That got the smallest smile out of him. “Then stop messing up.”
I laughed, but only for a second. From down the hall, the cardboard over the kitchen window gave a soft, uneven rattle every time the wind picked up. I couldn’t stop hearing it. The sound felt like a secret taped over, something we were all pretending wasn’t there.
That’s how it always felt with Adair. He’d take the blame, and we’d both pretend it didn’t hurt.
Adair - Age 10
I woke up because they were yelling again. At first, I thought it was thunder, but then I heard Mom’s voice. Dad’s too.
The kind of fighting that made the air feel heavy.
Finlay was sitting up in his bed, hair sticking up, his blanket in a tangle around his legs. “They’re fighting,” he whispered, even though I already knew.
“Go back to sleep,” I said.
“How can I? They’re loud.”
I didn’t answer. I just stared at the ceiling, waiting for it to stop. Usually, if you waited long enough, it did.
Another crash, like a dish this time.
Finlay flinched. “I’m going down there.”
I grabbed his arm. “No, you’re not.”
“But -”
“Just… don’t. If we stay quiet, they’ll stop faster.”
He frowned at me, confused. “How do you know?”
“I just do,” I said, though I wasn’t sure why I thought that. It just felt true. Like talking would only make everything worse.
The yelling got sharper, then dull again, like waves. I pulled my blanket up to my chin and tried to listen for the part where it stopped, that soft bit after Mom went quiet and Dad’s voice went low again.
Finlay sat on the edge of my bed. “You’re too quiet,” he whispered.
“Someone has to be,” I said, even though I didn’t really know what that meant yet.
When the house finally went still, I waited a little longer just to be sure. Then I rolled over and closed my eyes. I could hear Finlay’s breathing next to me, uneven but slowing down.
The next morning, Mom smiled like nothing happened.
She had pancakes on the table, and Dad kissed her on the cheek before work like he always did.
Finlay started telling some dumb joke to fill the space. Mom laughed, too loud, and I just kept staring at the plate in front of me, pretending I didn’t see the small red mark under her eye.
I didn’t say anything.
And nobody asked me to.
That was the first time I realized quiet could keep things from falling apart. If I just pretended everything was fine, and to not notice the tension, then everything would be okay.
At least, it felt like it would be.
Finlay - Age 9
The rain started slow that night, just little taps on the window at first. Then thunder. Then lightning.
Adair and I were home alone, which made it worse. Every creak sounded like something breaking. The power went out just after dinner, and the whole house went dark.
I sat on the couch, hugging my knees. “What if a tree falls on the roof?”
Adair was by the window again, holding a flashlight like it was no big deal. “It won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
He shrugged. “It’s not that windy.”
The lightning flashed bright enough to light up the whole room. I yelped. He turned around and frowned. “You’re fine,” he said.
“I hate storms.”
“I know.”
The thunder rolled again, long and low. I put my hands over my ears.
“Want to play cards or something?” he asked.
“In the dark?”
He pointed at the flashlight. “Not that dark.”
So we sat cross-legged on the carpet, playing Go Fish by the narrow beam of light. Every time thunder hit, I jumped, and every time, Adair’s face didn’t move. It was like he was daring the storm to get worse.
After a while, I stopped shaking so much. The thunder got quieter, or maybe I just got used to it.
“You think it’ll stop soon?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “It always stops eventually.”
“You said that last time too.”
He smiled, small and tired. “And I was right, wasn’t I?”
I grinned. “Maybe.”
When the rain finally eased up, the two of us just sat there, staring at the flashlight beam hitting the wall. The air smelled like wet dirt and metal.
“You’re not scared anymore?” he asked.
“Still kinda am,” I said. “Just less.”
He nodded. “Good.”
That night, after the storm was gone, I could still hear it in my head, the wind, the thunder, the rain on the roof.
But I also heard his voice, soft and certain: It always stops eventually.
And even though I didn’t know it then, I think I started believing him too much.
Authors note
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