Excerpt of Included!

CHAPTER23My father was drunk. He was alone in the house and he was hammered. Ittook about three seconds for me to figure that out, mainly because I’dnever seen it before. His religion was work to excess and all other things inmoderation, so that in the past, when I’d come home drunk and bloody, hisdisappointment shone out like holy fire. This thing that I saw now ...it wasnew and it was ugly. His face was loose and drawn, eyes gone wet. He filled thechair like he’d been poured into it. The bottle was open and close to empty,the glass down to half a finger. He stared at something in his hand, and strangeemotions moved in him so that his features seemed to flow across the bones ofhis face. Anger, regret, remembered joy. It was all there in staccato bursts, andit made him look like a soul unhinged. I stood in the door for a long time, andI don’t think he blinked once. Were I to close my eyes, I would see the colorgray touched with small, cold yellow. An old man in a fractured slice of time. Ihad no idea what to say to him.“Kill any dogs this morning?”He cleared his throat and his eyes came up. He opened the desk’s drawer200