"Yup."
"So what'd you do?"
"I showed up at his house, knocked on the door, all nice and polite. And then, when he answered, I beat the piss out of him. The guy was in I.C.U. for a week."
"Good," I said.
He gave me a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Oh c'mon," he said, "no warnings about vigilante justice?"
Thinking of my own brother, I could only shrug. I knew exactly what I'd want to happen if anyone tried that with him.
I glanced again toward the house. "At least you didn't kill him," I said.
"Yeah. But it didn't end there. The guy was a city councilman. Had a wife, a couple of grown kids." His voice grew sarcastic. "A regular pillar of the community."
"So he pressed charges?"
"Yup."
"What were they?" I said.
"Attempted murder."
My voice was quiet. "Wow."
"Yeah." Lawton shrugged. "But hey, it was true, right?"
"You wanted to kill him?"
"Wouldn't you?" he said.
"If you really wanted to kill him," I said, "you would've grabbed the gun. Right?"
"Maybe," he said. "Or maybe, shooting the guy seemed too easy."
"But with what happened to your sister, I mean, that had to count for something, right?"
He gave a bitter laugh. "Not when Mom wouldn't testify. And Kara, she didn't even know about it. And I was damned determined to keep it that way."
He looked out over the street, marred with potholes and weeds. "And let's say the thing with Kara got out. She'd be the girl who almost got molested by some forty-year-old. School was hard enough already. She didn't need that."
"What do you mean?" I said.
"Our school? It was the worst in the district. But it was the only one we had. And Kara and me, we got enough shit already because of the way we talked."
"I don't get it," I said.
"Like I mentioned, Grandma was a teacher. English mostly. And she didn't put up with any sloppy talk."
"You mean swearing?"
"Or bad grammar."
I felt myself smile. "But that's a good thing," I said.
"Yeah, well people didn't like it, especially other kids."
"Why not?" I said.
