Mark hadn’t been eviscerated yet by the time Emily arrived, lounging perfectly at ease despite a full hour of her mother’s interrogation. Emily tried to unravel the tableau she observed from the hall before anyone spotted her.
Her father reading through a stack of papers from his ever-handy briefcase. Comfortable as any typical evening at home.
Mark lounging back in an Edwardian wingback chair as if it were an old car seat pulled out of a wreck and propped up beside a makeshift basketball court. An empty beer bottle and another still half full stood sweating on a cherrywood end table. No coaster beneath. And her mother hadn’t killed him or corrected the situation. That was a degree of tolerance that Emily had never been afforded, not as a young girl and she wouldn’t be now either.
And h
