I found them at the kitchen table, Dad slumped over a coffee mug that definitely wasn’t holding coffee, his knuckles white around the ceramic. Uncle Rick sat across from him, fingers steepled under his chin like some bargain-bin detective in a crime drama. The air smelled of burnt toast and something sharper, whisky.

Uncle Rick’s chuckle bounced around kitchen. “Wow, can your skirt get any shorter?” His voice had that gravel-dragging undertone, the one that pretended it was joking while his eyes mapped the inches between my hemline and kneecaps. I watched his pupils dilate in real time, black swallowing blue like an oil spill.

I rolled my eyes hard enough for Uncle Rick to see the whites, making sure my sigh was audible as I adjusted my backpack strap. My fingers lingered at my waistband, one quick, practiced twist of fabric, and the skirt rode another inch higher on my thighs. The hem now barely grazed mid-thigh, but the teachers would still bark about dress code violations tomorrow. Worth it for how Rick’s knuckles went pale around his coffee mug.

The phone’s shrill ring cut through the kitchen’s thick silence like a scalpel. Dad flinched so hard his coffee mug skidded across the Formica, leaving a trail of dark droplets in its wake. He fumbled for his phone like it was a live grenade, his thumb smearing greasy fingerprints across the screen before he managed to swipe answer.

The hardwood creaked under Dad’s uneven footsteps as he disappeared upstairs talking quietly, his voice fraying at the edges like old rope. The words were too muffled to make out through the ceiling, but the cadence was all wrong, too measured, too careful, like someone choosing which landmine to step on first. I counted the seconds between each stair’s groan, my fingernails carving pale crescents into my palms while Uncle Rick drummed his fingers against his coffee mug in a rhythm that wasn’t quite random.

The backpack hit the floor with a dull slap, its contents shifting like loose organs inside a body. My fingers trailed along the kitchen countertop, cold Formica under my nails, as I reached for a glass from the cupboard. The cabinet door squeaked on its hinges, the sound too loud in the silence, and I caught Uncle Rick’s reflection in its polished surface. His gaze lingered just below my waistline.

The tap squealed like a stepped-on cat as I twisted it, cold water sluicing over my fingers and pooling in the glass with deceptive clarity. The chill bit into my skin, sharp enough to make me flinch, but it was the heat at my back that really stole my breath. Uncle Rick’s palm settled on my hipbone with the casual ownership of a man adjusting a lampshade, fingers splayed wide, thumb dipping into the hollow above my waistband.

Uncle Rick’s breath hit my ear first, hot, damp, carrying the sour tang whisky. His fingers slid under my pleated skirt with the practiced ease of someone who’d done this before, his calloused fingertips skating up the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. The fabric whispered against my skin as he pushed it higher, the starched cotton catching on his wedding ring with a faint rasp. “I always did like a girl in school uniform,” he murmured, his voice gone thick and syrupy, the kind of tone men use when they’re already halfway to getting what they want.

The water tasted faintly metallic, like the pipes had been sweating rust overnight. I swallowed carefully, the glass trembling against my lip as Uncle Rick’s fingers dug into my thigh, not painfully, just insistently, the way a child grips a favorite toy they’re afraid will be taken away. From upstairs, Dad’s muffled voice rose in sudden sharpness, then dropped back to that same measured murmur, syllables blurring together through the ceiling like radio static.

I put the glass down just as Uncle Rick spun me around, the half-full tumbler clattering against the countertop with a sound like ice cubes cracking teeth.