Chapter 48

“Who’s going to take care of him?” I asked.

“He has an aunt,” my father told me. His voice was still curt, his anger at what I had done to Steven Leary as raw as my knuckles from doing it.

“We’ll all take care of him.” That vow came from my mother. “And you.” She moved my shaggy hair, part Johnny Depp, part Little Orphan Annie with a dye job, from my eyes. I put it right back, not wanting her to see how red and puffy they were. So much red. “It’s okay to cry.” My mother might have had a better understanding of what Dougie meant to me than I did.

“Buck up, son.”

Not my dad.

Dawn was the first one to put Archie and me together.

“Boy! Come here.”