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Madison makes air quotes around the last phrase. “Meaning, your grandma took him off their pool pass and started asking your dad where he’d been all day once he got home.”

“But they stayed friends?” I ask.

“More or less,” Madison says. “They both got older. Found other boys that fit their socioeconomic status a bit better. Your grandma made sure they were never in the same classes together through grade school. When high school came around, Dover had figured out that he liked to hit things, and the bass drum looked like a good outlet for that.”

“Uncle Dover was in marching band?” Bristal spits out. But she’s blown through her beers and finished off mine, so it comes out more like marshing band.

Madison rolls her eyes. “Not for love of music. Randi Bean was the marionette, and she did not wear a lot of clothes for that gig.”

“So my grandma kept them apart throughout middle school, but high school comes around and they’re thrown back together,” I say.

“Pretty much,” Madison says. “They didn’t have the same classes together or anything, but fall of freshman year they got real tight again, and once your dad got his license his mom didn’t have a lot of say in where he went, what he did, or who he was with.”

“My dad partied?” I ask, not quite able to see it.

“Kiddo, it was the nineties. There wasn’t anything else to do,” Madison says. “Drink down at the riverbed or out at the old barn on 96. I mean no, not everybody drank, but back then most of us did. There was some pot at a few parties, and the really rough customers could get a hold of heroin, but your dad never had anything to do with any of that—pot neither. He just drank and hauled Dover’s ass out of places when he tried to start fights.”

“Sounds about right,” Bristal says, trying—and failing—to blow a note over the open mouth of her aluminum can.

“You need a bottleneck for that,” her mother tells her. “And no, you can’t have one. I’m cutting you off.”

“’Kay,” Bristal says agreeably, and I look at her in shock.

“I don’t fuck with my mom,” she says in reply.

“Smart girl,” Madison says. “Anyway, one night Dover got into it with Mark Donnelly—Randi Bean’s boyfriend. Brent hauled his ass out of there and put him in his car, which usually was enough to calm Dover down. But Dover had got it into his head that he was beating the shit out of Donnelly, and your dad had to leave the party altogether—and he shouldn’t have been driving.

“They don’t even get five miles before they hit somebody—it was the Milhaus family, if I remember right, coming back from the movies. Your dad and Dover went careening into a pole. Your dad was out cold, but Dover didn’t miss a beat. He knew it was his fault they’d had to leave, and that Brent was just trying to save his ass and ended up with his own on the line. Dover dragged your dad over into the passenger seat and made out like he’d been the one driving.”

“Shit,” I say, glancing over at Bristal, who nods, her mouth a thin line. “He did that for my dad?”

“He did,” Madison says with a heavy sigh. “And they both paid for it.”

“How do you mean?”

“Dover got a DUI and a gross negligence charge. Lucky they didn’t kill anybody in that wreck or it would’ve been manslaughter. Worst part was, he didn’t even have a license—we didn’t have the money to go through the courses, so he’d always just been driving without one. It all piled up, and he ended up going to juvie. Came out of there with bad tattoos and a worse attitude. Turned eighteen and didn’t go back to school. Things just kinda went downhill from there.”

Madison goes quiet, taps some ash from her cigarette into an empty beer can.

“Shit,” I say. “Meanwhile my dad goes on to become a defense lawyer.”

“Explains a lot, doesn’t it?” Madison asks, with a sad smile.

“Yeah,” I say, the clouds in my vision clearing a little as I think of my dad, his own beer, and the firepit behind the house, talking about how good people can do bad things. And then there was Dover, covering my dad’s ass and paying for it with his own future. I know the man sitting across from me in that maximum-security prison didn’t have a soft spot left in him, but it wasn’t always that way, and maybe bad people can do good things, too.

“I’m sorry,” I say again, staring at a scratch in the Jamisons’ kitchen table.

“You don’t need to be,” Madison says. “Your dad’s paid for it, in spades.”

“How do you mean?” I ask.

“Listen, my brother . . .” Madison shakes her head, stubs out the cigarette. “He belongs in prison, okay? Maybe he did this one thing right, one time. Or maybe it was a dumb move, but either way, Dover would’ve found himself behind bars, eventually. He was mean, deep down. It was a streak that your dad could overlook when they were kids, but it got bigger, became a smear, then a crevice. The only things Dover has ever been good at was getting girls’ pants off and landing a punch. He got better at both, but never smart enough to avoid the law. He’s got your dad dangling. Anytime he needs a lawyer, he can get one for free—or else tell a story the whole county would eat up like it was a fish fry at the legion hall.”

“Shit,” I say again. “That’s . . .”

“Really fucking shitty,” Madison finishes for me. “Dover’s my brother, but I feel for your dad. Nobody wants a Jamison as an enemy—but if it’s Dover, it’s even more dangerous to be his friend.”

“What do you think of all this?” I ask Bristal, who rouses herself from staring at the table.