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For a long time after she hung up, Nell stared at the debris of her phone. The dent in the wall would take explaining, and maybe an extra hundred a month, but her mom would cover it. The shards of glass on the carpet would take longer to deal with, and replacing the phone would be her responsibility. Which made sense, because no one had made her throw her phone at the wall, just like no one had made her call her dad and basically warn him that something was going to happen.

Stupid, she chided herself, but just thinking it wasn’t enough. “Stupid,” she said, under her breath. She left her desk chair and padded across the floor to her bed. “******** stupid. Why the ********.” It didn’t make sense to talk to someone who had no incentive to fess up. What would Luke Rodham have had to gain from being honest with her? He’d been adamantly clear that dealing with her was a chore, that he’d rather relegate her to the bottom of his list of priorities, that she was a political prop just like her brothers and her mother. Accessories. The cell phone charms in his life.

She picked up her pillow, shoved her face in it, and screamed for all she was worth, until it felt like her lungs would give out. Even once there was nothing there, no noise at all, she kept screaming in complete silence. Until she had to sit from the force of it, until her throat felt raw even without her voice.

It was alright to lose her s**t alone, in the privacy of her rented room. Losing it on the phone would’ve been gauche. Losing it with Carson would’ve been awful. Here? Here?

Emptied out, Nell dropped the pillow to her lap. This was it, then, she thought. This was the end. Not of her, or her mom, or her brother, but, you know, she’d had a family before. A weird family. And now part of it--granted, an assholey part--was going to go missing. Forever. And he probably wouldn’t even care, or deign to notice.

Well, she thought, pulling her laptop over to her. Screaming about it like a ******** baby wasn’t going to get her anywhere. It wouldn’t make the phone call to her mama any easier. She pulled up Skype and checked the time; Jenn had a flight today, and Nell wasn’t going to call her while she was in the air. Despite any hope of being too late, she suspected her mother hadn’t even left for the airport yet. There went that excuse.

So she dialed, and when her mother picked up she said, “Mama? I need you. Do you have time to talk?”

“Yes, Baby,” Jenn answered, sounding concerned. “What is it? Should I turn on the video chat?”

Nell’s eyes widened, and she shook her head emphatically. “No! No, Mama, it’s. No. I look like a mess.” She took a deep breath. “But it’s really important, and it’s--it’s a secret? And it’s about Carson. So you’ve really, really gotta be sure, like… that you have time, because… he trusted me to tell you.”

Okay, actually she’d threatened him, but… that was besides the point.

There was a pause on her mother’s end for a moment, and then she said, “I’m not boarding for another forty minutes. Please, go ahead. What’s going on with Carson, Baby?” Nell reminded herself to breathe. This wasn’t going to be hard, this was going to be way easier than asking Dad about it, because her mama wasn’t, categorically speaking, awful.

“Carson said Dad raped him when he was little,” said Nell. “And… and I think it’s true. Mama, I saw him, Dad, I saw him having sex with my friend Sean--Xichuan--you know him, we were in that pilot together?” Please don’t interrupt, she thought, taking a breath. For whatever reason, Jenn didn’t, and Nell continued, “I have pictures, so if you don’t believe me, I can show you, but I swear it’s true, Dad practically threatened to sue me if I said anything but I can’t not say anything. Mama, I don’t know what to do.”

Jenn was silent again for a long while, and then she cursed under her breath in Cantonese: “That son-of-a-b***h, I’m going to kill him.” Nell inched her hand across her bedspread and collected a raggedy old stuffed bear, tucked it to her chest as she waited for her mom to actually say something Nell was meant to acknowledge. Jenn took a breath, the sound ragged over the microphone, and then, much more collected, continued in English, “You have my attorney’s email, right, Baby?” she asked. “Forward the pictures to her. I’ll email her and we’ll figure out what to do.”

“Yes, Mama,” said Nell. She plucked at a patch of loose hair on the teddy’s head. “Mama, what do I do?”

Jenn sighed. “Send June the pictures,” she repeated. “I’ll speak to Carson, if that’s all right. What I need from you right now, besides those pictures, is for you to make sure your homework is done, okay, sweetheart?” The instinct to rebel at such an infantilizing request was massive, but Nell nodded and bit her lip to keep herself from doing anything weird, like starting to cry. She was an adult, basically. They didn't cry, except when the script said so.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll… I have a paper to finish, so… I’m gonna go. I love you, Mama.”

She waited for a response, this time.

“I love you too, baby,” said Jenn, gently. “I’ll call you later.”