“First time was Tom,” Sam said. The name meant nothing to Edilio, but it did to Quinn.

“Your stepfather?” Quinn demanded sharply. “Ex-stepfather, I mean.”

“Yeah.”

Quinn was staring hard at Sam. “Brah, you aren’t saying what you sound like you’re saying, right?”

“I thought he was trying to hurt my mom,” Sam said. “I thought . . . I was asleep, I woke up, I come down the stairs, they’re both in the kitchen yelling, I see Tom with a knife, and there’s this flash of light shooting out of my hands.” Sam felt tears stinging his eyes. It surprised him. He didn’t feel sad. If anything, he felt relieved. He hadn’t told anyone about this before. This was a weight coming off his shoulders. But at the same time, he registered the way Quinn drew back a step, putting distance between them.

“My mom knew, of course. She covered at the emergency room. Tom was yelling that I had shot him. The doctors saw a burn, so they knew it wasn’t a gunshot. My mom told some lie about Tom falling against the stove.”

“She had to choose between protecting you or supporting her husband,” Astrid said.

“Yeah. And Tom realized, once the pain was under control, he realized he would end up in the psychiatric ward if he kept talking about his stepson shooting beams of light at him.”

“You burned your stepfather’s hand off?” Quinn asked, his tone shrill.

“Whoa, back up. Did what?” Edilio demanded. It was his turn to be surprised.

Quinn said, “His stepfather ended up with a hook, man. They had to cut his hand off, like, right here.” He made a chopping motion on his forearm. “I saw him, like, a week ago, over in San Luis. He’s got one of those hooks now, you know, with, like, two pincers or whatever? He was buying cigarettes and handing the clerk money with his hook.” He pantomimed it, using two fingers for the pincers of the prosthetic arm.

Gone, Chapter 13