This One is Deadly Read Free Page A

tailgate. He groaned as he lifted it and set it on the ground next to Mom’s station wagon.
    Without looking, my father said, “What’d you do?”
    We both let his words hang in the air as I slowly walked over to him.  When I reached him again, he was already opening the bags of ice he’d had in the cooler and began emptying them back on top of soda cans.
    “Today wasn’t such a good day for me,” I said, then I added, “or Devin.”
    My dad always waited to hear our best excuses before he revealed his allegiance. It almost made it seem possible to appease him with the right set of words or phrasing. But tried as I might, I hadn’t been successful.
    “Jenny was picking on us. She wouldn’t stop, so I threw the leaves off the bottom of the pond at her.”
    “What were you doing in the pond?”
    I hesitated. I’d screwed up already. Under no circumstances were we to ever go into the pond because of germs, snakes, snapping turtles, and the fact that despite having all had swim lessons every summer, we might drown because no adult was there to use their magic anti-drowning spells.
    “Jenny and Rebecca pushed Devin in.” I lied. I lied about both Rebecca and Jenny because I knew they would’ve defended the other had I left them out of the guilty party and it didn’t matter. Whatever truth my parents believed was also a lie. Devin might go along with my lie or at least appear too scared to tattle on Jenny and Rebecca so it really didn’t matter what I said.
    “Uh huh,” My father said, trying to crush the ice under the lid enough to close the cooler lid shut again. He struck it hard. I jumped back at the sound, but he swung around and smiled.  “Darn thing. I think you’ll just have to help me make room for all this ice.” He reached down inside the cooler and pulled a soda can. “Grape or Orange?”
    My eyes must’ve lit up, because my father laughed.
    “Orange,” I said.
    “Don’t tell your mother,” he added, as he opened the can and handed it to me. He yanked the cooler up above his shoulders and staggered for a moment as he slid it onto the roof of the station wagon.
    “You girls need to learn to play nice with each other.”
    I nodded with the soda can still against my lips. My father must’ve had eyes in the back of his head because he seemed to know I agreed without ever looking at me.
    “Good. I will talk with Jenny and Rebecca, but I’m getting real tired this bickering. It’s not right. Family is family.”
    He had a smaller cooler in the back of his truck and from it he pulled a brown bottle with beer in it. He popped the cap with his pocketknife and lifted me up into the bed of the truck, and then sat down on the tailgate with me.
    “I love you kids. And you’ll need each other. It may not seem like it now, but friends come and go, but family you’re stuck with. That’s why we had the four of you, so that you all would have help in life. Right now, Rebecca and Jenny help each other, and I guess you’ve been looking out for… Devin.”
    My father always said ‘Devin’ the same way he said things when he wasn’t really listening. I didn’t understand it. I guess my brother was a mistake. He looked enough like my father not to be the milkman’s. I wiped the soda from my lips. My father helped with his thumb.
    “Can’t let your mother know that I spoiled your dinner.”
    “Do you love Devin like you love Jenny and Rebecca?” I asked. For a second there I saw a frown in my father’s lips, but then they shot up into smile.
    “We love all of you equally,” My father said with a laugh. “There’s different things we love about each one of you, but a parent’s love, the love that is right here.” He thumped his chest. “The love that can’t go away if we tried—it’s equal.”
    “I love Devin more than Jenny and Rebecca.”
    My father didn’t argue with me. He pulled me off the truck and we went inside for dinner.
     
    Dinner took everything from me. I knew two