Chapter 4: The Intervention

Lana crossed the room in her socks and looked through the peephole.

"Your mother, a woman in a cream blazer, a man in a collar, and two more behind them," she said. "Do they travel in a pack?"

"Always."

"Do you want me to open it?"

I picked up the cookie tin and zipped it inside my coat.

"No. I'll go down. I'm not letting them in your home."

She pulled on a sweatshirt and a pair of boots.

"Then I'm coming with you. It's my stairwell."

I opened the door.

My mother stood on the landing in a brand-new camel wool coat, the kind with a price tag you could read from across the street.

I had never seen it before.

Behind her were Shelby, my father with his hands in his jacket, and Kyle with a swollen purple jaw.

A heavy man in a black shirt and a white collar, the pastor from my mother's church, stood on the bottom step with a Bible held against his chest.

"Tanner," my mother said, and her whole face went soft and wet. "Oh, my baby. We've been up all night."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You hit your brother."

"He took my wallet."

"He was trying to bring you home!"

"Mrs. Briggs," Lana said, "there's a laundromat downstairs. You can't have a family meeting on a fire escape."

My mother looked at her.

"And who are you?"

"The one who owns the couch he slept on."

Shelby made a small, shocked sound.

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