Chapter 1 - The Castle Cake
June’s castle had six towers.
That was one more than the bakery version she had shown me on my phone three months earlier.
I made the extra tower because she said every real castle needed somewhere for dragons to sleep.
There were no dragons at her tenth birthday party.
There was only my brother.
Blake arrived forty minutes late in a dark blue shirt that probably cost more than my monthly truck payment.
Our father, Richard, clapped him on the shoulder.
“There he is.”
As though the party had been waiting for him.
My mother, Helen, rushed forward.
“You look exhausted.”
Blake laughed.
“Some of us work.”
I was standing six feet away wearing the same dark blue T-shirt I had worn while repairing two rooftop units that morning.
Nobody laughed at the irony.
June did not notice.
She had frosting on one finger and was carefully explaining the cake to her friend Olivia.
“That’s the princess tower.”
“What’s that?”
“Dad made it wrong.”
I looked over.
“You said dragon tower.”
“I changed my mind.”
I put a hand over my heart.
“After three nights?”
She giggled.
That sound was why I had made the cake.
Rebecca had once drawn a castle on a restaurant placemat when June was three.
Rebecca died two years later after an aggressive cancer that turned six months into four.
June remembered very little.
The drawing was one of the things she kept.
So I built the cake from it.
Lavender walls.
Amber sugar windows.
White frosting stairs.
It leaned slightly to the left.
June thought it was perfect.
Then Blake noticed.
“You made that?”
“Yes.”
He laughed.
“Jesus, Ethan.”
“What?”
“You fix furnaces all week and spend nights making princess castles?”
June’s smile faded.
I ignored him.
“Birthday girl, candles.”
My mother interrupted.
“Wait. Madison hasn’t come back.”
Blake’s eight-year-old daughter was outside opening a present Helen had given her.
At June’s party.
I looked at Mom.
“It’s June’s candles.”
“She can wait thirty seconds.”
June lowered her eyes.
There it was.
The Carter family hierarchy.
Richard at top.
Blake beneath him.
Blake’s child next.
Everyone else learned patience.
I had spent thirty-six years learning.
June would not.
“Light them.”
I handed her lighter? No, I lit them myself.
Ten flames.
People gathered.
June closed her eyes.
Then Blake stepped behind her.
“Make it good.”
She opened one eye.
“Uncle Blake.”
“Relax.”
He put a hand lightly against back of her head.
I saw it.
Something in me tightened.
“Blake.”
He smiled.
“Watch this.”
He shoved.
Not gently.
June’s face crashed directly through the center tower.
The hardened sugar windows shattered.
Children screamed.
For half a second everyone froze.
Then Blake laughed.
“Memorable.”
June lifted her head.
Frosting covered her hair and cheeks.
A thin red line appeared beneath her left eye where a piece of hardened sugar had cut her.
Her mouth opened.
No sound.
I was already moving.
“June.”
She started crying.
“Dad.”
I pulled her away.
Blake reached for napkin.
“Oh, come on. She’s fine.”
I shoved his hand away.
“Don’t touch her.”
He smirked.
“Jesus, Ethan.”
June clung to my shirt.
“It hurts.”
“I know.”
I turned toward kitchen for first aid kit.
Blake caught June’s shoulder.
“Hey, birthday girl, don’t be dramatic.”
She jerked away.
He grabbed her hair.
That was when I hit him.
Once.
Hard.
My fist caught his jaw.
Blake staggered into table.
Gasps.
My mother screamed:
“ETHAN!”
Not:
June.
Not:
What did Blake do?
Ethan.
Richard slammed his signet ring against table.
“You put your hands on your brother?”
“He put his hands on my daughter.”
“He was joking.”
June was shaking in my arms.
Blood mixed with frosting.
I looked around at relatives.
Nobody moved.
Blake rubbed his jaw.
“You always were a psycho.”
I stepped toward him.
Richard moved between us.
“Enough.”
Then he looked at me with the same expression he used when I was twelve and Blake broke my model airplane, sixteen when Blake wrecked my first car, twenty-two when Blake spent money Dad had set aside for my trade school.
I knew what came next.
Blake first.
Always.
Richard pointed.
“You apologize.”
I almost laughed.
“To who?”
“Your brother.”
I looked at June.
Then Dad.
“You want me to apologize because he hurt a ten-year-old?”
“He made a stupid joke.”
“He shoved her into a cake.”
“You punched him.”
“And I’d do it again if he touches her.”
Helen gasped.
“Threatening family now?”
Family.
There it was.
Richard’s face hardened.
“Apologize to Blake or walk out.”
I waited.
He continued.
“And if you walk out this time, don’t come back expecting your place in this family or a cent of my estate.”
Silence.
Thirty relatives heard.
Blake smiled behind him.
Helen looked relieved.
They expected me to fold.
I had before.
For holidays.
Loans.
Peace.
Rebecca used to tell me:
“One day June will watch how you let them treat you and think that’s what family means.”
She had been right.
I picked up June.
“Get her shoes,” I told nobody in particular.
My cousin Sarah handed them to me.
Richard’s expression changed.
“Ethan.”
“No.”
“You’re making a permanent decision over one incident.”
“No.”
I looked at Blake.
“I’m making it over thirty-six years.”
Then at Helen.
“And she doesn’t get thirty-six.”
June buried her face in my neck.
I walked out.
Behind me Richard shouted:
“You leave, you’re finished!”
I did not turn around.
In the truck, June cried quietly.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Did I ruin the family?”
I pulled over.
Immediately.
“No.”
“But Grandpa said—”
“No.”
I looked directly at her.
“You did not ruin anything.”
“Are we poor now?”
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
“We were never rich.”
“Grandpa is.”
“Grandpa’s money is Grandpa’s.”
She wiped cake from nose.
Then whispered:
“Does Uncle Blake hate me?”
I wanted to say no.
I could not lie.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with Blake.”
June stared through windshield.
Then said something I did not understand until years later.
“Sometimes he looks at me like he knows me.”
I glanced at her.
“He is your uncle.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
Then:
May you like
“Like he remembers something I don’t.”
Five years later, I would remember that sentence while reading the police report that changed everything.
