Free Redemption by Stacey Lannert

revved up and cried, so I gave up at that point. I wasn’t mad anymore, and I gently took her home. It turned out she had a bad bruise on her tailbone, and Mom said it might’ve been cracked.
    My mom wasn’t happy with me. Even worse, I wasn’t happy with me. Christy got hurt on my watch, and even if she was going to be okay, I felt terrible. I thought maybe my kick had caused that bruise on her butt. Or maybe I was evil for making her go sledding against her will in the first place. I didn’t want to be bad again. I vowed right then that I would never physically hurt her, and I would always protect her whenever possible. I never raised my hand to her again.
    I even tried to get between her and Dad as much as I could. I could smell their fights brewing like I could smell a storm coming. I seemed to be the only one who could settle them. If Mom got involved, the fight just got worse. Eventually—and early on—Dad and Christy just stopped talking to each other except when they absolutely had to. If he wanted something from her, he would ask me to ask her. If she needed to ask him about things, I would do her bidding. I got tired of playing their carrier pigeon, but I did it. It was better than listening to them fight, and it was much better than watching her get hurt.
    After the move to Alhambra, my parents had a brief honeymoon where they got along great. But the peace lasted only a few months. Things took a turn when Dad started drinking beer again at night. Soon afterward, he started coming home late from work more and more often. His moods were difficult to predict. Sometimes he was happy, but he could also be dark.
    Mom and Dad stopped speaking so nicely to each other. The volume went up in the house. She nagged him about leaving his stuff around the rooms, and he told her she needed to keep things cleaner. They went their separate ways after dinner. My parents could be watching the same television show, but she’d be upstairs while Dad stayed downstairs. Following their lead, Christy headed upstairs while I gravitated to the basement.
    On the nights he didn’t show up for supper, we’d eat in front of the TV on trays. That’s when Mom would really get mad. She’d beg him to stop drinking and to get help.
    “You’re tearing this family apart; just look at your daughters,” she’d yell at him from down the hallway.
    We’d pretend like we couldn’t hear them as we sat silently in front of the TV. If we still had food in front of us, we’d stop eating it.
    Sometimes he was mean, and yelled all kinds of nasty things at her. Other times he was gentle, and he’d try to rub her arm. She’d say, “Don’t touch me.”
    More often than not, we heard the words, “I’m not really drunk.”
    I believed him. Getting drunk was something that bad people did. My daddy was not bad. He couldn’t be.
    I thought all parents got along about the same as mine. I thought all moms and dads chose their favorite children. I thought all daddies came home late smelling funny and making noise. I didn’t have close friends, so I couldn’t compare my family to anyone else’s. We had moved too often for me to get close to people. I didn’t have a clue what was normal—and what was not.
    I only knew that when he came looking for me, he made things better.
    “Come here, Tiger. Sit on my lap,” he’d say, smelling tangy yet sweet. His lap was soft and warm. “Tell me how your day was.”
    My mom never asked me about my day. She didn’t tell me everything was going to turn out all right. She didn’t hug me all the time. I couldn’t comprehend how she got so mad at him. When he was drinking, he seemed happy to me. He’d make jokes and slow down and spend more time with me. We’d talk about everything. I could listen to him for a hundred years; it didn’t matter what he said. He hugged me as I sat on his lap.

The Real Alhambra
    lhambra wasn’t the Camelot I had hoped it would be. The village—it wasn’t even a