I sometimes thought that my mom had her heart in the right place when all of this had happened, and maybe that’s the worst part.

She’d tried to be a mother, and a wife, but never consistently. She used to kick my dad out of the house for the smallest things. Because he hadn’t taken the trash out or had accidentally cut my bangs wrong or was late from work because he’d gotten caught up on a demanding case. Then the small stuff became big stuff, because he was just too frustrated. He’d drunk too much. He went MIA on us too much. He’d shown her that he loved her less and less. As with all loveless partnerships with children, they’d remained together hoping that someway, somehow, this would disappear.

It had rained the day he died. No, not rained, poured. I remembered thinking God was crying with me. I remembered thinking God was unfair, because I was already unhappy, and I hadn’t even done anything wrong.

At his funeral, there’d been a redheaded woman standing a few graves across, hiding behind big glasses. She was staring at us. I didn’t know why.

I now knew.

Then I remembered Darren stepping into the picture, conveniently close to the time Dad had died. The whole timeline of that year was a blur. Twelve is a bad age to lose a parent. You’re on the verge of a hormonal revolution, your body is blooming, your innocence is wilting, and everything feels personal.

At first, I thrust myself into Darren’s open arms willingly.

I’d been so thirsty for love, so unbearably lonely, I gulped up his attention like it was water in the desert.

And Pam had loved it. Us. For the first time since I was born, she’d looked at me with a smile on her face. Granted, it was because I’d played right into her second-family plan, but she’d enjoyed it nonetheless.

Then it happened.

It happened.

The flashback came, and with it, the terrible realization of how I’d gotten here, to this beach, at this hour, betrayed and stripped out of every meaningful relationship I’d ever had.

That night.

His back.

As he closed the door.

Locked it.

Put the key above the tall cabinet I couldn’t reach.

Turned around and said, lisplessly, “Hello, Jesse.”

I collapsed, my knees hitting the sand, my hands trying to grasp at it like it was ropes I could climb. Ropes leading to the entire flashback that was now so clear, so vivid, so real.

I shouldn’t have been there.

But I was.

I remembered the vodka bottle he placed in front of me.

It’d had a snowflake on it.

Eight Years Ago.

PAM CARTER JUST WANTED TO be taken seriously.

That’s what she told me, anyway, in the rare moment where she’d decided to acknowledge my existence.

“I have a lot of potential,” she said around the long cigarette tucked between her lips, looking at me through the rearview window of her crappy car. Her once-raven hair was now platinum blonde, her dark roots telling the story of her empty pockets. “I went to college, you know. Almost finished it, too.”

When Dad died, my mom looked almost relieved. He died in the stupidest possible way. He fell and broke his neck. The stairs leading to his office were wet. The last day of his life, I’d told her I needed new shoes, and she’d said, “We don’t have the money. Your dad has a new family, you know. A second one. Maybe that’s where all the money goes.”

I’d turned around to him, looked at his helpless face. “Is that true?”

He didn’t deny it.

Then, very calmly, with the tone I’d borrowed from her, I said, “I hate you. I never want to see you again.”

I carried this moment in my life like the mark of Cain.

I didn’t know when, exactly, Pam had met Darren, but I remembered the first time she told me about him. I believe it was akin to a royal wedding announcement. She’d said she’d fallen in love with a man, and that he was wonderful and caring. That I would love him, too.

We moved in with Darren four months after Dad had died, the weekend they got married in Todos Santos’ City Hall. There wasn’t much to tell about Darren. Everything he did, he did gingerly and neatly. He was harmless, and would often expand his eyes when he was spoken to, as if he, himself, couldn’t believe he was worth the attention. It was easy to see why he took a liking to Pam. She was a great actress and could fake emotions perfectly.

She made him feel powerful and important.

All the things he didn’t believe about himself.

Darren laid the Daddy stuff on real quick and real thick. When he found out I was into books, he set up an entire library in his living room. He would often take me on spontaneous shopping sprees and hold my hand.