Nobody interrupted me.
“What part of that needs to stay small?”
His sister looked away.
His mother folded her arms.
My husband stared at the porch floor.
Then the rear passenger door opened.
His brother stepped out.
He had been quiet all afternoon, quiet enough that I had almost forgotten he was the one who had carried my ankle brace back to the SUV.
He reached inside.
When he came back out, he was holding it.
My brace.
He walked toward the porch.
My husband turned sharply.
“Give it to me.”
His brother stopped.
For the first time, he didn’t immediately obey.
He looked at me instead.
“She needs this.”
My husband’s expression changed.
“I said give it to me.”
His brother’s fingers tightened around the brace.
“You shouldn’t have taken it.”
The silence that followed was different from the silence in the field.
That silence had belonged to fear.
