Conviction (10 page)

“You what? Why?”

He ignores my question. “One’s for you. You, Kevin, Jenna. When they’re ready, I’m going to have a dinner for all of you. Something nice. And purees for Ellie.” He
pulls open the fridge and looks inside. “You eat yet?”

“Ah, kind of. I had a sandwich.”

“I’ll make you an omelet. What do you like in omelets?”

I try not to look surprised. “Anything. Nothing green.” Then I add, “Thanks.”

He pulls a bunch of stuff and a carton of eggs from the fridge and gets to work. Without turning around, he says, “You win your game today? You had a game, right?”

“Yeah, we won. Five–two.”

“What was the two?”

“RBI on a triple. Left-handed batter. I missed on a cutter.”

“Thought you almost never threw cutters.”

“How’d you know that?”

He shrugs. Then he says, “So everything good at school and all that?”

“At school?” It’s the kind of thing he would’ve asked me back when he actually liked sitting around and talking to me. He must be really happy about his birds. Maybe
he’ll keep them as pets after all. “Yeah, same old.”

“How’s Kevin’s class? He a good teacher?”

I say yeah, and Trey kind of smiles. “Figures,” he says. “He always liked telling people what to do.”

“It’s weird he’s someone’s dad.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was weird—was that rude of me to say? “He just doesn’t seem like one. I’ve never even heard him raise his voice. You think
he’s a good dad?”

“A good dad? Sure. Just not a very good husband.”

“What? Why?”

“Just always thought he could do better by Jenna. Never thought he should marry her in the first place. She was our valedictorian, you know that? She should’ve moved away somewhere
and done something with her life. Make sure my birds are still alive, will you? They’ve gotten quiet.”

When I pick up the box, the birds start chirping again, and when I undo the lid the four of them are huddled together there. They skid and flap around when the box tilts. “Still
alive.”

“Excellent.”

“Yeah.” I let the lid fall shut. “So…how’d you know I don’t throw cutters?”

“I read when you told that woman from the Stockton
Record
you don’t have much use for them. I”—he pauses like he’s embarrassed, then makes an expression
like,
Eh, screw it—
“I get it sent to me in New York.”

“You what? You don’t have papers there you like, or what?”

“I don’t have time to read the paper. I just read about your games.”

“Oh. Really?” I look down at the box again so he won’t see my grin. For as much as he seems to hate Ornette, that wasn’t something I saw coming. “You know you can
just read that online, if you—”

“Yes, I know that, Braden, thank you. We’re no
Ornette
, but when the wind blows right, we do get an Internet connection in New York. I just like having something you can
actually touch.”

“Well, it’s your money, I guess. If you want to spend it on stupid things like that.”

“Yep.”

He sets down a plate in front of me. The omelet’s steaming, and there’s two sprigs of some green plant on top. I tell him thanks and take a bite, and he sits down across from me with
his own plate, and then without warning I’m stabbed with an ache that my dad’s not here for this. I used to take for granted the ordinariness of things like all three of us just being
in the same room together, or sharing a meal, and for a second I let myself imagine what it would be like for that to happen again. I didn’t exactly expect Trey to come back ready to call my
dad and make up on the spot, but—I don’t know. I guess a part of you always hopes.

Trey’s watching me not eat. “You don’t like it?”

“No, it’s good,” I say, but it comes out too quickly and makes it sound like I’m lying. I eat another bite. “It’s good.”

“I didn’t put the chervil
in
it, you know. You said you don’t like anything green. I don’t serve people things they specifically told me they don’t
like.”

“No, it’s not that. I just…” I tuck my arms around my sides and meet his eyes. “I’m just…thinking about Dad.”

A darkness goes across his expression again, chasing away whatever it was that made him look happy before. Maybe I should’ve kept it to myself. But what does he think—that
we’ll just never acknowledge our dad, or the trial, or anything that’s happening? Who else am I supposed to talk to?

He takes a bite of his own omelet, then spears another bite with his fork and looks at it, clinically, like it’s some kind of lab specimen. “Dry,” he says. “Overcooked
it.”

I don’t want to talk about eggs. “I just—I’m really worried about a trial, and the lawyer says—”

He silences me with a single warning shake of his head, and I sit back against my chair, defeated. As bad as everything is, it would help to at least have Trey on the right side. It’s been
nine years, and if his plan is to just stay pissed off forever, then I think that’s a shitty plan. I mutter, “You know, people always say they feel better after they forgive stuff they
were upset about.”

“Oh, they always say that, do they?”

His tone is sarcastic. He slants his head to one side and gives me a look that means he knows perfectly well what I meant by that. I should probably back off. Instead I say, “It seems like
good advice.”

Trey sets down his fork. I tense, nervous he’ll snap at me, but instead he reaches up and massages his temples with his thumbs like I’m exhausting. “You know what, Braden, in
the right situation, sure, whatever, maybe it’s great advice, but you have to be careful what you forgive. Sometimes it doesn’t mean you’re a good person or you’re taking
some kind of moral high ground, all right? Sometimes it just means you’re weak.”

Or maybe tearing your family apart because you want to stay pissed off forever is weak. “That’s not what it means.”

He sets his jaw and lets his gaze track around the kitchen, taking stock of old grievances, maybe, or maybe telling himself to not yell at me. “It means what, then? You keep letting people
get away with whatever the hell they want because they know you won’t do anything about it?”

“No. It means you believe God gives us more chances.”

Trey snorts. “That’s what you actually believe?”

“That’s what the Bible says.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“I—yes.” Don’t I? But then I know people tell themselves all kinds of things about God because they don’t know him or they’re afraid of who he really is.

“I could massacre a bunch of innocent people and God would forgive me and I could just go to heaven? That’s what you think?”

I hesitate. “Well—yes.”

“Really? All I have to do is say I’m sorry?”

“I mean, you have to
be
sorry, and ask God to—”

“I could play against you and nail one of your batters in the head for no reason and you’d forgive that?”

“I—that’s different.” I cross my arms and look away. “Fine. Whatever. I guess. I don’t know. I just think nine years is plenty long to hold a
grudge.”

“You know what, I could do without the attitude.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” I stab with my fork at the omelet and will politeness into my tone. “I just think if there’s a trial and it doesn’t go well,
I bet you’ll feel guilty you didn’t—”

“That’s enough, Braden,” he says, sternly enough this time that I drop it immediately. I eat the rest of my omelet in uneasy silence while he texts someone on his phone, and I
jump up when he starts to clear our plates.

“I’ll do those,” I say quickly. “Thanks for the omelet. It was really good.”

Scrubbing the pans, my hands red from the steaming water, I’m irritated with myself for not being more careful. I didn’t get anywhere with him anyway, and I know I need to watch
myself. He’s not happy about being back here—that much is painfully obvious—and the absolute last thing I want to do is give him a reason to think maybe this just isn’t
working out or a reason to cut me out of his life the way he did to my dad.

He leaves again that night, this time around two. When I hear the garage door close after him, I go downstairs and turn on the kitchen lights, check to make sure all his things are still there.
The birds make noise like maybe I woke them up. I peek into their box and they skitter around, chirping louder.

I used to always want a dog, but my dad would never let me because he figured it would be too rough when it died, and when it’s late enough that no one else in the world is awake,
it’s kind of nice to have something else there in the house with me even if it’s only just birds. I sit there in the kitchen and wait for Trey to come home, and then when I hear the
garage door open again, I turn off the lights and go back upstairs to my room before he sees.

One night when I was six, Trey’s last year in high school, Trey came into my room in the middle of the night. He did that sometimes when he and my dad got into it, and
earlier I’d woken up to the whole house shaking from my dad’s yelling, and so that night I was only half surprised to see him.

“Scoot over,” he whispered, and I rolled closer to the wall, and Trey lay down next to me on top of the blankets and murmured, “Go back to sleep.” I kept my eyes closed
and hugged my stuffed horse and tried not to move or touch Trey so he wouldn’t go away, but I stayed awake, and tracked his breaths. After a long time he whispered, “Hey. Braden. I need
to ask you something. You awake?”

I opened my eyes at him so he could see I was.

“Am I a good brother to you?”

That one was easy; Trey never yelled at me or made me feel bad and always let me hang around him even when he was with his girlfriend. I nodded.

“You swear?”

I nodded again, and we lay there for a long time. I stroked my horse’s nose and played with its hooves. Trey and Emily had won it for me at the state fair, and I was always nice to it;
besides the home run ball I’d caught at that Giants game with Trey and my dad, I loved it more than anything else I owned. I listened to the trickling sound of my fish tank.

Then Trey whispered, “Hey, Braden—do you think I’m a good person?”

That one was tougher. I knew a lot of people—his teachers, his principal, my dad—didn’t. He got in trouble a lot at school. But I loved him, and he was always good to me, so I
said yes. When I did, he rolled over onto his side so his back was to me.

“Wake me up at six if I’m not up,” he said. “I’ll make your favorites for breakfast.”

He was up the next morning before me, and he was the one to come back in and nudge me awake. In the daylight, I could see there was a bruise starting over his cheekbone, a dark half-moon under
his eye.

“Quit staring,” he said, when he saw the look on my face. “I got this wrestling. It’s nothing.”

While Trey cooked breakfast that morning, I shadowed him as close as I could without actually touching him. Twice he almost tripped over me, but he didn’t say anything. My dad’s
floor creaked as he rolled over in bed, the sound coming through the ceiling over the sizzling of the onions, but Trey didn’t react when I looked up. My dad was supposed to be at work. A
couple minutes later, Trey set two plates down on the table, with diced potatoes and onions and bell peppers, my favorite. There was toast with peanut butter and a banana he’d peeled and cut
into slices for me.

Trey put his elbows on the table and leaned his head forward against his hands. I waited for him to eat. He didn’t. I took a forkful of the potatoes and let it hover over my toast.
“Hey. Trey. Should I make a sandwich?”

He looked up, startled, and I got the feeling he’d forgotten I was there. Then he muttered, “That’s disgusting, Braden. Quit messing around. Eat.”

I lowered the fork closer to the toast. He narrowed his eyes at me. I jiggled the fork so the potatoes wobbled. He said, “Don’t even think about—” But I slanted the fork
so the potatoes plopped onto the toast.

“I told you to knock that off, Braden. Don’t make me tell you again.”

I shoved half the toast in my mouth. Then I opened my mouth to show him the half-chewed peanut butter and potato on my tongue. I said, “Soooooo good.”

That got him. “You’re disgusting,” he said, but he reached up and grasped his chin in his hand so I wouldn’t see he was smiling, and I’d thought maybe things were
okay again. My dad loved him—otherwise he’d just leave him alone. But before we left for school that day, we sat in the garage with the engine on, and then Trey put his hands on my
shoulders and twisted me so I was facing him. It startled me; Trey never touched me.

“Listen,” he said. “I want to tell you something, okay? Don’t turn out like me.”

“Like you how?”

“At all,” he said. “I’m not a good person.”

“Yeah you—”

“Shut up and don’t argue, Braden. You don’t know anything.” His voice was rising. “You’re just saying that because you’re a kid. Are you listening? Just
do what Dad tells you. Don’t just try to tell yourself you’re a good person and it doesn’t matter what he thinks about you, because that’s bullshit and you’re just
lying to yourself because you want it to be true so bad. You got that? So don’t be like me, or you’re just asking for it and you deserve it when he thinks you’re nothing.”
It was the only time in my life he’d ever kind of scared me.

I don’t know what that particular fight was about, but really, half the time their fights weren’t even
about
anything; we could be deciding what to eat for dinner and the next
thing I knew, Trey had gone cold and my dad was slamming doors and yelling. Both of them have always been the kind of people who hold on to things and turn them into something bigger, and I know
they always pushed each other’s buttons. Neither of them was exactly perfect.

But in the end, Trey was the one who left us. And maybe when that’s the kind of person you are, your disloyalty is always there inside you, underscoring everything else you do; maybe your
eventual betrayal pools inside you and bleeds out over time, until finally it’s poisoned everything you ever cared about.

I should know.