I reached out to touch his shoulder, but he shrank away from my hand.

“Don’t, Leo,” he muttered.

The radiator groaned again, the steam whistling through the valve.

Outside, the snow was beginning to fall, small gray flakes sticking to the glass of the kitchen window.

My mother took a step toward my father, her hands outstretched, her fingers twitching.

“Arthur, I did it for us,” she pleaded.

“I did it to keep our family together.”

“You lied to me,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.

“For ten years.”

“Every single day.”

“I was trying to protect you,” she said.

“Protect me from what?” he asked, finally looking up at her.

“From my own daughter being healthy?”

“From my son not having to work himself to the bone to send us checks?”

He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw a deep, dark shame in his eyes.

“He bought this place,” my father said, pointing a finger at the small kitchen counter, the peeling linoleum, the old refrigerator.

“He lived on canned soup so we could pay for her wheelchair.”