Excerpt from The Removed by Brandon Hobson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Ernest kept his mind busy by focusing on Sonja and Edgar, being a good father. He took them out to movies, to parks, anything he could do to get them out of the house while I stayed in my chair, depressed. Only in the past few years have we finally started acknowledging the anniversary of Ray-Ray's death. Now, every September 6 we build a small bonfire, and each of us shares a memory. Ernest and I decided it would be a good way to get the family together, because we were never all together anymore.

* * *

Around six in the evening, I heated up a leftover casserole for supper. Ernest and I ate on trays in front of the TV, watching a show on unsolved crimes. Ernest kept pointing the remote and adjusting the volume up and down.

"Maybe the foster kid can fix the TV," he said.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with the TV."

"I think it's the volume."

"The volume is fine."

"What do we do? Sit here and take it?"

I saw the frustration in his face, looking at the remote. He was obsessed with the colored buttons and their functions, the menus on the screen. The remote made him nervous. I thought of the years in the past when we had sat in the same chairs in front of the TV, eating supper contentedly. How different he looked now, giving such a confused gaze, a confirmation that things were declining quickly. While he continued to stare intently at the remote, I heard Sonja come in through the front door. She lived just down the road in a small house and had been coming over more often now that Ernest was getting worse.

He looked up at her when she stepped into the room, and for a moment I wondered whether he even recognized her. She walked over to him and put her hand along his back, rubbing in a light circular motion.

"How are you, Papa?"

"I don't know. Goddamn remote."

Her face grew solemn, as if she realized the severity of his illness. We were all speechless for a moment while I stared at her. Sonja, at thirty-one, strongly resembled my sister Irene when she was younger, though they were nothing alike. My sister had always been demure, reserved, conservative. Sonja stayed out late nights. I worried about her and the younger men she dated, some of whom attended the college in Quah. I wanted her to settle down; Ernest and I both did, but the more we brought it up, the more she withdrew from us.

"There's a guy I want to meet," she finally said.

"A new guy?" I said. "What does he do?"

"He's a musician," she said. "I'm going to see him play tonight at a bar near campus. Tonight I'm going to talk to him. I'm finally going to meet him. I've thought about it for weeks."

"A musician? What's his real job?"

"I haven't even met him yet."

"Well, how old is he?"

"I don't know. Twenty-three?"

I didn't say anything. I got up, and Sonja followed me, helping me take the dishes into the kitchen. I turned on the water in the sink and rinsed the plates, then handed them to Sonja to put in the dishwasher.

"Did you talk to Edgar about Ray-Ray's anniversary next week?" she asked.

"I was busy helping Irene at the powwow all weekend, but yesterday I tried calling him, and he hasn't called me back."

"Me either," she said. "I'm concerned."

"I am, too," I said. "It's been too long. It's been weeks."

"He might be embarrassed," she said.

We'd had an intervention with Edgar six months earlier. He had been living with his girlfriend, Desiree, in New Mexico and got hooked on meth. He'd stolen money from Desiree and from us. Before the intervention, he had visited and said he needed money to pay for an alternator replacement on his car, plus repairs for an oil leak. Ernest loaned him over $400 in cash. He'd already dropped forty pounds in weight, so we were on edge. Sonja thought he was doing cocaine, too. Edgar was only twenty-one, my youngest baby. The thought of his drug use had nauseated me. I could hardly eat. A month later Desiree had called and said she had to bail him out of jail for breaking into a car.

Excerpted from The Removed by Brandon Hobson. Copyright © 2021 by Brandon Hobson. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.