On the basketball court
Kip took the ball, shaking his head at Jackie's missed basket. The WNBA would not be banging down her door any time soon. And he didn't really like what she was offering either - more excuses for her stupid blowhard of a husband. Really, what made Eric DeFelice so special? His radio show was annoying - Kip purposely kept his alarm clock tuned to that station because he knew there was no way he'd stay in bed listening to that mindless crap for any longer than he absolutely had to. His kids were alright, he guessed, but the older one was clearly more like his mother, and the younger one wasn't even biologically his, so how much credit could he honestly take? Eric was the kind of guy Kip's father had been impressed with, the kind of person he wanted the LeClef family to keep up with, to emulate. Kip would never understand that. He would never understand why being themselves had never been good enough.
"Obviously, it doesn't matter what you think," Kip pointed out. "It doesn't even matter what happened that day. I'm the only living person who saw it, and yet there are more interpretations of his death than I can probably even name." He shook his head. "I'm surprised they let me in here." He gave Jackie a look. "And I don't know why you defend him."
Kip moved further away from her then, acting for a moment as though she wasn't even there, losing himself in his own thoughts and the thump of the basketball against the floor. Kip had never allowed himself to get lost in anything while he was growing up, afraid of being caught off-guard, but with the most imminent threat to his well-being destroyed and buried six feet deep for about two years, he now felt a bit freer to explore his thoughts now and then. Sometimes, when his mind replayed the scene of his father's death, he wished he hadn't indulged himself, but when he thought of other things - rare happy memories, good moments that had been sprinkled here and there throughout his childhood - he almost wanted to live inside his mind instead of out here in the real world.
"You remember my mom, right?" he asked, after a long pause. His tone had changed from accusatory to nostalgic, and he stopped dribbling the ball and turned to look at Jackie. "Like, from when I was little, not recently," he clarified, as though they might be two different people. "I found an old Christmas card you guys sent us."