Re: quicklog, hotel: graham & jake
[Jake didn't need that long look any. Home invasion it had said in the papers but he was seven, not two. He remembered fine, that knock at the door. He remembered his mom's voice. He remembered crawling beneath the bed, his breath tasting like dust. It was like having an outline on a canvas, and someone picking up a brush and layering on some color. Didn't make one difference to the outline, but it was more than he'd started off with.
He didn't care any more that his daddy was a criminal. Cared something about his grandma's view on that, because his grandma thought Graham hung the stars and moon. But he'd heard plenty about Ross as a man in Vegas, hanging about places that didn't connect him and Graham any, and Jake thought he was smart enough to figure the rest out.
But he cared. He still cared.] So why didn't you leave? [His voice was tight with hurt, and his hands were still shaking some, but anger was bleeding through the damp shock of the nightmare relived.] Why did I have to come back to you like some lost mail you were putting off picking on up? Why couldn't you just come on back to grandma and grandpa's? Ain't nothing about Vegas there. You didn't bother. You wanted to stay out there to earn that money.
[He didn't say anything about safe and good. Safe and good didn't have anything to do with Graham, who hadn't even been there for it. Safe and good was his grandparents, and Jake didn't blurt out nothing about not being good and safe being real far off when nothing felt right or safe for years on end.]