My father was being guided toward a police car in handcuffs.
William Brennan was fifty-eight years old, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, and the kind of man people described as dependable because he always showed up loudly enough to be noticed.
He wore work boots, tucked in his shirts, held doors for strangers, and never forgot birthdays when there was an audience to see it.
People like that often get mistaken for good men.
His face was red with fury now.
He kept twisting against the officers, shouting in my direction.
I couldn’t hear his words over the ringing in my head, but I knew the shape of his anger.
I had lived with it all my life.
Next to the squad car stood my mother.
She wasn’t crying.
She wasn’t horrified.
She wasn’t asking if I was hurt.
She was pointing at me while talking to another officer, her expression pinched with offended outrage, as if I had created an embarrassing scene at a family barbecue instead of being beaten in a parking garage.
