“Do you think he ran off?” she asks, and Brandon’s face twists with some combination of pain and fury. The curve of his cheek shifts as quickly as a caught fish jerking on a line. “Sorry,” she adds. “It’s just … him and your mom were always fighting, I thought maybe—” “Shut up,” he growls, tears still spilling down his cheeks, his lower lip wet with spit. “You shouldn’t talk about things you don’t know anything about. He didn’t leave us, he wouldn’t ever leave us. He’s not like your dad. Something must have happened to him.”
