He believed the store was the reason.
He didn’t know that his father had been taking my paycheck.
He didn’t know that his mother had been receiving money that should have been paying our electricity bill.
He didn’t know that I had started skipping lunch at work so I could stretch what little food we had at home.
He didn’t know that sometimes I drank black coffee for breakfast and called the dizziness in the afternoon stress.
He didn’t know any of it.
He was four.
He only knew that there wasn’t enough.
My father finally closed the refrigerator door.
The click was quiet.
Almost gentle.
But I knew my father.
I knew that silence.
I had grown up with it.
My father had spent twenty-eight years as a police officer. He was not a man who shouted when he was angry.
That would have been easier.
When Dad shouted, you knew what was coming.
