you have no idea what you're talking about. / forget about it.
DONNIE BRASCO (1997) PROMPTS. / no longer accepting .
he hears it before he understands it — that thin , brittle edge in her voice that means she has already decided this conversation will not end well .
the apartment feels smaller now , walls crowded with things bought in panic — bottles , blankets , a crib assembled wrong the first time and never fixed . oswald moves through it carefully , like a guest who stayed too long and learned too much . everything smells like milk gone sour and reheated coffee . there are toys on the floor , soft things meant to be harmless . nothing in this place should feel dangerous , and yet his shoulders are tight like he has walked into a room with no exits .
he has not slept properly since the girls arrived . neither has she ; the difference is that he knows it , and she refuses to admit it out loud . lacie sits hunched on the couch , hair pulled back too tight , eyes too sharp for how tired she looks . motherhood has not softened her ; it just stripped her raw .
oswald does not raise his voice . he never does . that was something levi taught them both without ever saying it out loud — the quieter the man , the more terrifying he expects to be taken .
he loves the girls : that part is simple , terrifyingly so . they curl their fingers around his without hesitation , recognize his voice , settle against his chest like they already know what kind of man he is . he did not plan for this : his life folded in half without asking him first , and he resents himself for noticing .
lacie watches him watch them . there is something sharp in her gaze now — not jealousy exactly , but something adjacent , something poisoned by exhaustion and memory .
he says something wrong — not cruel , just tired , a comment about schedules , about doctors , about the way she sometimes stares through the girls like they are somewhere else entirely . about how maybe they should talk to someone , about how she flinches when the girls cry too loudly .
he does not say levi’s name .
he does not have to .
it lives between them anyway , like mold in the walls .
she snaps back fast enough to draw blood .
the words land and keep landing , echoing long after their sound has passed . oswald remains still , because stillness is how he survives moments like this . because movement would be a concession , and he has learned — too well — what concessions cost .
the words are familiar : they have been used on him since childhood , every time he tried to name something wrong before anyone was ready to hear it . oswald feels something old and ugly crawl up his throat — bitterness , long buried under duty and silence , finally finding air .
he thinks —
i was there .
i lived in the same house .
i watched you disappear and called it growing up .
what comes out is quieter than he means : he asks why she never told him .
the room goes still . her face twists — anger first , then something like terror trying to wear anger as armor . but he watches her hands instead of her face . they shake when she thinks no one is looking . they are gentler with the girls than they ever were with herself .
he only says her name , soft , like he used to say it when they were small and hiding in closets . she flinches anyway .
he does not raise his voice . he never does : what he does is worse : he asks why she did not let him protect her , he asks why she stayed , he asks why she trusted levi more than him .
those are the wrong questions . he knows it even as they leave his mouth . they are questions soaked in guilt and grief and the unbearable truth that he was a child too and still feels responsible anyway .
she presses her palms into her temples like she is trying to keep her skull from splitting open .
❛ forget about it . ❜
that one is quieter .
that one is tired .
forget about it — as if forgetting has ever been an option for either of them .
oswald feels something settle in his chest then , not anger , not righteousness , but finality . he looks at the twins asleep in their playpen , two small bodies curled toward each other the way he and lacie once did .
he thinks about how cycles repeat when no one stops them . how love , untreated , can become another kind of violence . he understands , suddenly , with terrifying clarity , that this is not a conversation meant to convince her . it is a conversation meant to justify him .
he should stop there . he knows that . he has always known when to stop — that is how he survived .
but the girls cry then , soft , confused , and something breaks loose in him that has been waiting years for permission , and he says something he cannot take back : something about the girls not being safe like this , something about how love is not enough when it is this unstable . she tells him to get out , and he does , because she does not stop him .
the days after are worse than the fight : lawyers , forms , language stripped of feeling , turning blood into bullet points .
they sit across from each other in a room that smells like disinfectant and burnt coffee . neither looks at the other when the papers slide between them .
oswald signs because someone has to be stable , because the girls sleep better with him , because love , apparently , is something the court does not measure unless it looks like consistency .
lacie signs because she is tired , because the past is louder than the present , because part of her believes this is what she deserves .
their hands do not touch .
later , alone with two sleeping children and a life he did not choose but will not abandon , oswald finally lets himself feel it : the love , the resentment , the guilt that no custody agreement can erase .
he thinks of the girl who slept beside him as a child so she would not be alone . he thinks of the woman who told him to forget about it .
later , people will ask when he knew , when he decided , when he crossed the line from brother to something colder , more official .
he will not tell them about that night , about the smell of spoiled milk , about the way her voice cracked on ❛ forget about it ❜ like she was asking him to forget her too .
he will only say that sometimes love means staying .
and sometimes it means taking children and walking away before the past learns how to speak through them again .
