My father’s face hardened. He told me to lower my voice. My mother said I was turning a difficult night into something bigger than it needed to be. And then Brandon came downstairs.
He came down with the particular air he always carried when he knew the house was aligned behind him regardless of what he had done. He leaned against the bottom banister and looked at me the way he always looked at me when he wanted me to feel he was barely bothering to pay attention.
“You should stop acting like everything is about you,” he said.
I stared at him.
I stared at him because I could not immediately locate the correct language for what it felt like to stand in a house where every decision, every holiday, every evening plan, and every family resource had circled around him for as long as I could form memories, and be told by him, in that house, that I was acting like everything was about me.
