It was several long moments before dad finally spoke in a raspy voice. “What do you remember before coming to New York?”

I gave my dad a puzzled look. The world as we know it was changing even now, and he asked me this? “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s important, Michael. Please, what do you remember?”

I sat back in the driver’s seat to think. I was frustrated with this line of questioning. I didn’t know how this had anything to do with what was going on, but maybe if I answered, he’d finally tell me what had him so upset.

“I don’t really remember anything before New York.” I knew I hadn’t been born in the city. I knew we had come here when I was younger about five or six, but all my remembered time of my youth had been of this city and the surrounding areas.

“What’s your first memory?” Dad asked.

I grinned. That was easy. “Me, you guys, and Eric. We took a long drive into the country. We went to a lake to have a picnic. I remember Eric pushing me in the water before I was ready, and I got back at him by splashing him in the face.”

My dad looked a little startled. “You were nearly eight then.”

“Yeah, so?” I shrugged. I didn’t know what the big deal was. I mean really––how far back can a person truly remember into their childhood?

But my dad didn’t seem to like that answer as he gave me a concerned look.

“Dad, seriously, what’s going on?”

A resigned expression came over him, and then he began to speak. “I’m sorry, son. We should have told you this sooner. I wanted to, but your mother…” he paused a moment as if he was trying to find the right words. “Your mother was worried about you.”

My dad shook his head, “To be perfectly honest, we were both worried about you. So we did things to help you, including settling here––in New York. It was a fresh start for all of us, and we’d gotten comfortable with our new lives here. Neither of us wanted to upset that. There was no reason to until today.”

I didn’t like the sound of any of this. I wasn’t stupid. When all my friends’ parents showed off embarrassing baby pictures of their cute little angels, my parents were noticeably silent, because there wasn’t a single baby photo of me to be found anywhere. It was something I had chosen to blatantly ignore, because part of me was glad there were no embarrassing bare ass photos of me to share. Now I was questioning that wisdom.

“What happened before we came to New York?” I asked.

A hard look came in my dad’s eyes, and it made me instinctively lean away from him. He worked his jaw back and forth a few times before he answered in a thick voice. “You were brutality attacked by your brothers. That’s what happened.”

“What? Brothers?” I asked, incredulously. My mind raced with the information. Attacked? What the hell did that mean? I blinked at my dad. And brothers? Like in plural?

I had one brother. That was Eric, though technically he wasn’t even my real brother like my dad wasn’t my real dad. My parents had taken Eric in not long after we had moved to New York. Eric’s dad had been a friend who had died in a tragic car accident. That’s about all I knew about that. All I really cared about was I had gained a big brother who I had learned to look up to and shared a happy childhood with.

I also knew that Arnold Layton wasn’t my biological father, but he’d been there for me pretty much my whole life. He’d raised me. Guided me. Loved me just like a dad. It hadn’t been until I was in my teens that I realized he and I looked nothing alike. There was also the fact that my parents never talked about before we moved to New York. Though, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the truth of the matter. My mom had split from my real dad, and probably not under the best of circumstances (which could explain the lack of baby pictures).

I had a friend Jarod who lived under similar circumstances. The man he had learned to call dad most of his life wasn’t his real dad either. It had been a huge secret most his life. Until last year when his mom finally fessed up––Jarod’s real dad was spending hard time in a prison upstate for three counts of manslaughter since Jarod had been two.

I braced myself because I had a feeling this was about my biological father. Was he a hardened criminal too? God, I hoped not. I saw what it had done to Jarod. That revelation had spiraled my friend into a hell of a serious self-esteem complex––If my father was a killer, then what was I?

“Yes.” Dad replied. “You had three of them on your birth father’s side. Two of them were quite a bit older than you, the other just a few years your senior, and all three were extremely jealous of you.”

“Why?”

Dad let out a long sigh. “In order to tell you that, I suppose I should tell you something else first.”

Already my head was spinning with what my dad––yes, he was my dad––had told me. I decided right then I wasn’t going to have some major complex over it like Jarod. No matter what dad said next it was only to get the burden that had obviously been weighing so heavily on his chest for years, and maybe to satisfy my curiosity. To me it didn’t matter who was responsible for my conception. It was this man right here in this car that mattered to me. In making that split decision, a sort of peace came over me, and it wrapped around me like a warm blanket. I could handle whatever came next.

“Arie?”

Both my father and I turned to my mother standing just inside the garage. My mother prided herself in always looking her best with the finest clothes and seemingly perfect hair. Even when she was woken in the middle of the night from a dead sleep, my mother always had that “perfect” look to her that most women and some men would kill for. But as she stood there at the front bumper of the black BMW with her mascara running, her hands nervously moving through disheveled hair, and a violent desperation in her eyes, I finally got to see the side of my mother I never thought existed. I thought it had been tough seeing my dad off, but this was much worse.

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My dad moved from the car and toward my mom so quickly I didn’t have a chance to say a word, not that I could, I was still too shaken by my mother’s appearance. The hysteria I been attempting to keep at bay all morning was back in full force. My heart began to thunder in my chest and my breath now heavy and fast. My god, I needed to get this under control.

I was determined to reign this in. I could do this. I’d done it many times before. I put a hand to my chest and closed my eyes imaging my heart slowing down and beating a slow and steady rhythm. And every time I remembered why I was in a panic, I moved my mind back to the steady rise and fall of my hand that tracked my breathing, which was starting to level out.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

“Michael.”

I looked up shocked to see my dad had opened the driver’s door and was standing like a valet, waiting for me to exit. I looked and mom had disappeared back into the house. I had no idea how long I had been sitting there trying to get things back under control, but I felt much better now. I carefully moved out of the car, trying not to think too many thoughts. Just trying to be as much in the moment as I could.

After the door was closed behind me, dad stepped aside and gestured toward the door leading into the kitchen. I stepped into the cool air-conditioned house and slipped out of my shoes. A habitual practice that was automatic. But then I paused there with my hands in my pockets, not knowing what to do exactly.

My curiosity was at an all-time high, but if it was causing so much destress from my parents, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, especially not after my little episode. But I also knew I needed to know, whatever it was, however bad it was, I needed to know what was going on.

I spun around to demand answers from my dad, but before I could say a word, he had a hand up to stop me.

“I know you have questions, and you have every right to the answers, but now is not the time. I have to go take care of something first. I need to know exactly how bad this is going to get. When it’s done, we will talk.”

He didn’t even wait for me to respond. He simply closed the garage door on me. A moment later, I heard the car door open, and then slam shut. A few more moments after that, the car’s engine roared to life. I stood there listening as my dad backed the BMW out of the garage.

Exasperated, I turned around to find my fourteen year-old sister pulling a half gallon of mint chocolate chip out of the freezer. She opened the silverware draw, pulled out a spoon, and then gave me an expectant look. “You want some? I figure if the world is going to end, no one would care if I ate ice cream for lunch.”

I shook my head.

She shrugged her shoulders as if it didn’t matter to her if I was skipping out on the chance to do something taboo––at least by our family’s standards. Our mom was a stickler for eating healthy and in healthy ways. Obviously, Emmaline had decided to take advantage of the moment.

“How long has she been that way?” I asked, running a nervous hand across the top of my tightly cropped hair.

My sister pulled back a barstool at the large kitchen island and dipped her spoon into the near full carton like she was about to have her last meal before an execution. “Since that ship showed up,” she managed to get around the colossal bite she stuffed in her mouth.

It irked me that Emmaline wasn’t taking this all more seriously. Something big was going on, and she was acting like it was just an opportunity to do whatever she wanted. Though it could be her age. Maybe if I was fourteen too, I wouldn’t be taking things so to heart. But I was, and it was scaring me in ways I could not explain. It was like I was stuck in a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from.

“Did she say anything to you about it, or anything else?”

Emmaline shrugged, “Nope. She’s just been crying like someone died or something.”

My irritation at my sister spiked to anger, and before I knew what I was doing, I stepped across the kitchen, violently yanking the spoon from her. I then walked over to the sink and threw it in with a loud clatter.

“Hey!” my sister yelled.

I then marched over to the stainless-steel refrigerator, rummaged through it, found the leftover pasta from last night, and slapped it on the island in front of my sister.

My sister folded her arms and glared at me. “You aren’t the boss of me.”

I then pointed a finger in her face just to make sure she got the full meaning of what I was about to say. “And you could be a little less of a jerk. Some crazy things are going on, but that doesn’t mean you forget about who you are and what you are supposed to do. You could also be a little more sensitive to whatever mom is going through. People don’t cry like that for no reason, Em.”

“I know,” My sister said in a small voice, looking like I had just slapped her.

Immediately, I felt a wave of guilt wash through me, realizing that my sister’s actions weren’t because she was taking advantage of our mother not being herself, she was simply trying to cope with the world crumbing down around her.

I crossed the space between my sister and I, and pulled her against me. We stayed like that for a long time as Emmaline wept against my chest. After her shoulders stopped shaking, I let go of her, dried her tears with my thumbs, and then gave her the best smile I could manage. She gave me a weak smile back.

On a sudden inspiration, I then went to the kitchen drawer, pulled out two clean spoons, and offered one of the spoons to my sister like a peace offering. Her smile widened as she grabbed it. She gestured to me to go first. I made a big production of scooping out a large bite with plenty of chocolate chunks, and then ate it.

I had to admit the cold minty chocolatey taste made a small part of me feel better, even if it was just a small part. The best part, by far, was seeing the bright smile on my sister’s face as she looked back at me. That made me feel a good deal better.

Between the two of us that half gallon of mint chocolate chip didn’t stand chance. I let Emmaline scrape the bottom of the carton as I relinquished my spoon to the cavernous kitchen sink. I watched it fall across the other spoon I’d tossed in haste earlier; glad I could redeem myself from such a stupid move. At least that was one of my family I could fix. I wished it would be so easy with my parents.

I gave a heavy sigh as I refocused myself to what I must do next. I’ll admit, I was using the mint chocolate as an excuse not to face reality, but the ice cream was gone now. The temporary reprieve was over. I held out a hand to my sister.

Yes, I could have left her here to rummage in the kitchen for more junk food. I could even tell her to go to her room, not that she would listen to me. But I knew she would be upset if I didn’t include her in this. Maybe she was fourteen, but she was still part of the family, part of this world. I had no right to shield her from whatever was happening. This was her life too, and it would be better for both of us, if we faced whatever was going on together.

“Shall we?” I asked her.

Emmaline hopped off the bar stool as she reached out to me with an appreciative grin.

“We shall.”

We marched into the living room arm in arm ready to face the world, and whatever had our parents in so much distress.