"What did you say to me, boy?"
For once, his father's slurred words didn't set his knees to shaking. Abel felt his lip curl in a sneer of his own.
"I said, no. No, I ain't paying your bail an' I ain't hustling. You can dry out in here for a bit." The words felt good, delivered with cold precision.
Everyone had a breaking point and Abel had reached his somewhere between the cooling body of the only parent worthy of the name and the sobs of his siblings.
Abel remained steady on his feet as his father flung himself against the bars, using them to balance against a world that was clearly swimming and shifting as he listed somewhere between 'still drunk' and 'viciously hungover'.
"When I get outta here, you little sack o' shit-"
"Ma had the baby," Abel cut in, the words harsh and flat. "A girl. Ma named her Fancy."
His father opened his mouth again but Abel continued, relentless. "The baby made it. Ma didn't."
Each sentence was short, bitten out as if each phrase hurt more than the last. He made no effort to gentle the news. Zachariah might have loved Margaret but he'd been a mediocre husband on his best day, and those were few and far between.
"Wha.. you lyin'-"
"I ain't," Abel said, fingers curling around the cold metal bar of the cell, grounding himself with the way it bit into his palm. "You can talk to the preacher 'bout it. I asked him to stop by later. Figured you'd need someone to listen to you an' I got too much to do."
"No... NO!" Zachariah flung himself at the bars, reaching for his son as if he could just rip that truth from Abel's flesh until it was bleeding on the ground.
"No, not my Margaret! MARGARET!"
Abel turned to leave, "Baby's healthy," he said, though he wasn't sure if his father actually heard any of it over his own shattered wailing. "Boys are... well, they ain't alright but they will be."
When he caught his father's muffled curses, words making it clear that he'd happily consign the rest of his family to perdition in exchange for his dead wife, Abel's sigh hissed through his teeth.
He hadn't expected this to go any different but it did confirm that he made the right choice. Abel didn't trust his father's grief not to turn to booze fueled fury on a dime and he had four younger siblings now to keep from Zachariah's fists.
As he turned away, the inhuman howl of grief that Zachariah released made even Abel's stomach lurch. But theirs wasn't the sort of relationship that led itself towards comfort and support, a fact that Abel had to remind himself as his foot stuttered on the floorboards.
And only when the screaming faded to broken sobs did Abel manage to make himself walk away.