When things happen in microseconds, they are hard to sort out in your memory; the shutter speed is too quick. Charlie seemed to turn from my mother at the instant Dad entered the kitchen, yet one of those actions surely came first. Mom went back to polishing. Charlie strolled toward the fridge and opened it, as if to forage for food. He turned casually and looked up at my father, giving him a "hey there" nod. Dad peeled his eyes from Charlie to Mom and back to Charlie. Some silences are heavier than concrete. "Alex, you should go upstairs," Dad said, suddenly glancing back to the hallway.

I had never seen his face look so wild, almost stricken. He was used to gambling losses and sometimes a courtroom defeat, but he'd just suffered a different kind of blow, beyond calculation. "Alex, would you go, please," he repeated without looking at me. I took the stairs two at a time, grateful to be out of this mess, but at the same time, I had wanted to stick around. Nothing seemed real now except the boozy, oblivious laughter that kept bursting from the den. At the top of the stairs, I leaned over the bannister, peering down. "What the fuck," I heard Dad say. His voice rose more in disbelief than anger.

He rarely lost his temper. "Calm down," Charlie said. "Nothing's going on." "Nothing going on? Are you fucking my wife, Charlie?" "Who the fuck told you that? You're just drunk.".