"Where did you get this," he said.
"She gave it to me."
"Who gave it to you."
"You know who."
His father looked up. Carter had been scared of a lot of things in his life. He had been scared of the dark and of the Lavender Pit in the encyclopedia and of Freddy Krueger, which Danny had made him watch at a sleepover and which had given him nightmares for a month. He had never once in his life been scared of his father. He was now. Not because his father was angry, though he was. Because his father's face had come open, somehow, like a TV with the back off, and everything inside it was exposed and humming and dangerous to touch.
"You went through my things," his father said.
"You sent me to the drawer."
"I sent you to the fuse box."
"You said they were dead." It came out of Carter louder than he meant, and he didn't care. "You said both of them. You said before I was born. You said there was a fire. There wasn't any fire. There wasn't any fire, Dad. He cut you out of the pictures with scissors and he wrote in the newspaper that he didn't have a son, and she kept the negatives, she kept all the negatives, she's got a bathroom full of you."
"Carter," his mother said.
"She's not dead. She lives on Elm Street. She lives on Elm Street, Dad. That's like ten minutes from here."
His father stood up. His chair went back and hit the wall.
"You don't know," he said. His voice was very low. "You don't know anything about it. You're eleven years old. You read something on a microfilm and you think you know." He was breathing hard. "Did she tell you what I did?"
"She said you said no."
That stopped him. Carter saw it stop him. His father stood there by the wall with his hands opening and closing, and something went across his face that was almost a laugh and almost something else.