“Did you do it?”

“Yep, I sure did.”

“How much?” I asked.

Lice Peeking grinned. “It wasn't money I stole from Dusty,” he said. “It was Shelly.”

“Oh.”

“What can I say? I needed a lady with a big heart and a valid driver's license.”

I said, “I'll be back after I see my father.”

“Whatever,” said Lice Peeking. “I'm gonna hunt down a beer.”

My mother says that being married to my father is like having another child to watch after, one who's too big and unpredictable to put in time-out. Sometimes, when Mom and Dad are arguing, she threatens to pack up our stuff and take me and Abbey out of the Keys to “go start a normal life.” I think my mother loves my dad but she just can't understand him. Abbey says Mom understands him perfectly fine, but she just can't figure out how to fix him.

When I got back from the trailer park, my mother was in the kitchen chopping up onions. That's how I knew she'd been crying. Nobody in our family likes onions, and the only time Mom ever fixes them is when she's upset. That way she can tell Abbey and me that it's only the onions making her eyes water.

I knew she'd been to the jail, so I asked, “How's Dad?”

My mother didn't look up. “Oh, he's just dandy,” she said.

“Is there any news?”

“What do you mean, Noah?”

“About when he's getting out.”

“Well, that's entirely up to him,” Mom said. “I've offered to put up his bail, but apparently he'd rather sit alone in a cramped, roach-infested cell than be home with his family. Maybe the lawyer can talk some sense into him.”

Of course I couldn't tell her what my father had asked me to do. She would've raced back to the jail, reached through the bars, and throttled him.

“Think they'll let me visit him again?” I asked.

“I don't see why not. It isn't as if his social schedule is all booked up.”