“Don’t tell me what?” Abel said.
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“It’s not nothing,” I said.
She glared at me. “Don’t tell
him.”
Abel was getting frustrated.
“What? Don’t tell me what?”
He’d been drinking; he never
came home from work sober, and
the drinking always made his
temper worse. It was strange, but in
that moment I realized that if I said
the right things I could get him to
step in and do something. We were
almost family, and I knew if I made
him feel like his family had been
insulted, he’d help me get back at