Born a Crime

They were coming home from church, a big group, my mom and Andrew and Isaac, her new husband and his children and a whole bunch ...

“Don’t do this, Dad, please. You’re drunk. Just put the gun away.” Abel looked down at his son. “No,” he said. “I’m killing ever ...

vindicated; I’d been right about Abel all along. I could direct my anger and hatred toward him with no shame or guilt whatsoever ...

Abel said. Isaac ran over to Andrew, and Andrew held him. Then Abel raised his gun and he started shooting. My mother jumped in ...

style. Then he pulled the trigger. Nothing. The gun misfired. Click! He pulled the trigger again, same thing. Then again and aga ...

into the passenger seat next to her. Just as she turned the ignition, Andrew heard one last gunshot, and the windshield went red ...

to Abel. He didn’t know. I was filled with rage, but there was nothing I could do. I felt completely impotent, but I still felt ...

terrifying. Whatever nerve I’d worked up to call him I immediately lost. To this day I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t k ...

health insurance.” “What? No, no. That can’t be true. I know my mom has health insurance.” She didn’t. As it turned out, a few m ...

back on a gurney? Send her out in an ambulance? She’ll die. You need to treat her right now.” “Sir, we can’t. We need a form of ...

understand. Hospital can be really expensive.” “Lady, I have money. I’ll pay anything. Just help us.” “Sir, you don’t understand ...

me? This is my mother’s life. This is her life. Take the money. Take all of it. I don’t care.” “Sir! You don’t understand. I’ve ...

lived a good life. I genuinely did not know what to do. I stared at the nurse as the shock of what she’d said sunk in. My mind r ...

if I was millions in debt, and it was always my mother’s solemn vow that raising my brothers was the one thing I would never hav ...

the one to break that cycle. I would be the one to move forward and not back. And as I looked at that nurse outside the emergenc ...

harm. She will do it without thinking. But I don’t think the child knows how to do that, not instinctively. It’s something the c ...

“Your mother is stable,” he said. “She’s out of surgery.” “Is she going to be okay?” He thought for a moment about what he was g ...

other bullet went through the back of her head, entering below the skull at the top of her neck. It missed the spinal cord by a ...

blood had made the wound look much worse than it was. The bullet took off only a tiny flap of skin on the side of her nostril, a ...

The doctors kept her sedated the rest of that day and night to rest. They told all of us to go home. “She’s stable,” they said. ...