Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (Ernest Cunningham, #1)

by Benjamin Stevenson

Call me a reliable narrator. Everything I tell you will be the truth, or, at least, the truth as I knew it to be at the time that I thought I knew it. Hold me to that.

I should have started with that, but I promised to be reliable, not competent.

That’s a lie, actually. I wouldn’t be friends with people who called after midnight.

But age gives perspective, and now I know the difference between being popular and being talked about.

Something you should know about me is that I like to look at everything two ways. I’m always trying to see both sides of the coin.

All I can hope for, when I die, is to be a buzzing topic of conversation over breakfast.

I had to listen to Marcelo gently defend himself against Lucy’s latest investment opportunity pitch, some harebrained scheme that was so multilevel it needed an elevator. I used to make fun of her for it, until I’d realized that these companies prey on women by weaponizing certain feminist ideals—namely independence, both financial and in business—to fabricate a sense of self-worth.

It was easier to tell where my dad had been than to see where he was. The empty armchair in the living room. The plate in the oven. Stubble in the bathroom sink. Three empty holsters in a six-pack in the fridge. My father was footprints, residue.

It’s like snow on this mountain, is the only way I can put it. Lots of little flakes, and then you’re knee-deep in it. Or ash on a lung, I guess. Is that too dark? Things seem to only move little by little, but then you look back and they’ve moved a lot.

“I’m sorry I lied to you. I didn’t want to be the one who couldn’t give you what you wanted.”

Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.