PART 2
I stepped forward.
“Darryl,” I said. “Take your hand off my sister’s neck.”
He didn’t.
So I took out my phone and dialed 911 right in front of him.
“This is Sergeant Anders Holm, Minnesota State Patrol, off duty. I’m at a residence on Lake Rd. 11, north of Brainerd. I need a deputy for a domestic assault and a child endangerment. And an ambulance for possible carbon monoxide exposure.”
Darryl let go of Britt and stepped back. His face went white.
“You can’t do this. You’re off duty.”
“I’m also her brother,” I said. “And his uncle.”
The Crow Wing County deputies arrived in eleven minutes. The paramedics were right behind them.
They checked Rhys’s blood with a little clip on his finger. His carbon monoxide level was high enough that they put him on oxygen right there in the ambulance.
“Another night in that shack,” the paramedic told me, “and he might not have woken up.”
Rhys held my hand the whole ride to the hospital.
Britt rode with us. She took off her sunglasses in the ambulance.
“He started in October,” she whispered. “Small things. Then not small things. He said if I told you, he’d make sure Rhys went into foster care. He said a cop’s sister would never be believed.”
“You’re believed,” I said.
At the hospital, a doctor examined Britt’s eye. Her cheekbone was fractured. There were older bruises on her arms and back.
Darryl was arrested that night. Domestic assault, child endangerment, and neglect. The deputies found the ice shack heater and photographed the blocked vent. They found Rhys’s things in a trash bag in the garage. His bed, his hockey trophies, his dad’s photo.
His stepnephew had been sleeping in Rhys’s room for a month. Darryl’s sister had been paying Darryl rent for it.
Britt got a protective order the next morning. She filed for divorce that week.
Darryl pleaded guilty in the spring. Three years.
Britt and Rhys moved into my house for a few months while she healed. Then into a little rental across town. She found a counselor. She went back to work.
Rhys went back to hockey.
His first game back, I sat in the stands with my sister. She wasn’t wearing sunglasses.
In the third period, Rhys scored.
He skated past the bench, pointed his stick straight at us in the bleachers, and banged it on the glass three times.
“What’s that mean?” Britt asked me.
“It’s what his dad used to do,” I said. “When he wanted to say ‘thank you’ and couldn’t say it out loud.”
She cried in the stands.
So did I.
THE END.
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Sometimes the person behind the sunglasses is begging you to notice. Look closer. Ask again. And don’t take “we’re fine” for an answer.
What would you have done if you found Rhys on that ice? Tell us in the replies.