Flummoxed, she stormed back into her bedroom and checked under pillows, then under the bed, then in Myron’s hamper. It had up and vanished in a flicker of white silk.
Hunter? she wondered. But why would he?
Perplexed, she headed back down to Hunter’s room. She searched it again, this time being careful to check each and every drawer, under his pillows, beneath his mattress. Has he taken other things in the past? She couldn’t think of any.
“Mom?” His voice startled her out of her reverie. He was standing in the doorway with his backpack on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
The look of shock and betrayal on his face struck her hard. She dropped the unopened box of condoms in her hand back into the drawer as if she hadn’t touched or seen it. Guilt swept over her face.
“I was just looking for something. Have you seen my nightgown?” The question sounded stupid the instant she said it.
“Your what?”
“Nothing. I just . . . I want you to clean this mess up, okay?” she said, smoothing her motherly visage back into place. “Laundry is Thursday, and this place is a mess. Louisa can’t even get a vacuum in here.”
He glowered at her in a barely contained rage. Get out of my room, Mom! But all he said was, “Okay.”
Margot wiped her hands on her yoga pants as though she’d just been dusting and stepped past her son out into the hall. “Okay. Good.”
Hunter grabbed the door with white knuckles, eager to slam it in her face.
“So.” She struggled to change tack. “Where’d you go this morning?”
He didn’t want to answer. A thousand choice words died on his lips before he forced out a mumbled response. “Library.”
“That’s nice, honey. Did you meet anyone there?”
Her sunny, condescending voice made him cringe. To prove he could manage his own social life, he said, “Sort of. There’s a guy that hangs out there sometimes.”
“Really? Does he go to your school?”
“Nah. I think he goes to the public high school.”
“Well. Maybe you could invite him over.” She attempted a smile, but she could see the resentment bleeding off him in waves. Daunted, she tried again. “Say, why didn’t you tell me about the closet?”
His eyes bulged at her, enraged she’d snooped in there as well. “What about it?”
“Max didn’t finish the work. Do you want me to get somebody back here? You know, to paint?”
“I dunno. I don’t care. It’s just a closet, right?”
She shrugged sheepishly and left him fuming, his room tossed over like a crime scene. He slammed the door behind her and turned to the mess she’d rifled through. His mess. He kicked half of the crumpled clothes into the closet and shut the door, but not before reading the inscriptions again.
BAD BeNNy
BeNNy KiLL
Back at his desk, he checked his computer for signs of her snooping, then pulled a small spherical camera from his desk drawer. Hunter’s face appeared on the computer screen as he plugged it in and adjusted the camera to watch over his room, his door, and the hallway outside.
21
The Martin Family
November 10, 2014
“Ava! Ava, look what I found!” Toby called out to her from one of the crawl spaces in the attic.
Ava set the yellowed newspaper down on the floor of the storage room midsentence:
“No one but a maniac could have inflicted such wounds as I found on the boy,” the coroner . . .
She carefully hid the page where her little brother wouldn’t see the 1931 headline. Toby had enough trouble sleeping already without knowing the terrible things the newspaper said. The things that had happened up there in the attic. She poked her head out into the main room. “What?”
“Come here. You gotta see this.”
She crossed the cold expanse of the attic to the miniature door on the other side. She poked her head into the crawl space. “What’d you find?”
In the incandescent glare of the bare light bulb, he showed her. It was a gun. He pointed the barrel at the far wall as though it were a toy. “You think it’s real?”
“Oh my God, Toby! Give me that.” She carefully removed the heavy gun from his hand, aiming the muzzle at the floor. “Where’d you find this?”
“Over there.” He pointed to the gap between the roof rafters at the eave where the floorboards didn’t reach. “It was in that fluffy stuff.”
“You mean the insulation, dopey?” She popped open the chamber and saw the silver butts of five bullets. “Oh my God! This thing’s loaded! Toby, you could’ve shot your face off!”
“Wow. What should we do with it?” he asked, crouching next to her. Ever since they’d come to the gloomy house five years earlier, they had been a we. He followed her around like a shadow and hated to leave her side. He would sleep in her bed every night if Mama and Papa would let him.
“I dunno. We can’t exactly say where we found it, can we?”
They weren’t allowed in the attic. Papa was at work, and Mama had gone to the grocery store, leaving Ava in charge of her younger brother. Remember the rules. Don’t leave the house. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t answer the door. No friends over. You can do that for Mama, right? Can I trust you, sweetie?
The attic was strictly off limits, so the minute Mama Martin had left the house, the two children scrambled to the attic door. Their parents kept it bolted, but Ava had become quite proficient at picking locks.
“Maybe we should hide it,” Toby said, eyes trained on the gun, both hungry and fearful. She knew what he was thinking. Ava had found him hiding under his bed the night before, convinced a monster was hunting him. I saw it, Ava. The monster was in my room.
“Yeah. Maybe.” She weighed the metal in her hand. She didn’t dare tell him the terrible thoughts racing through her mind—thoughts of how Toby could never be trusted with the gun by himself, thoughts of Papa and the trouble she’d catch if he ever found out they’d been up there snooping. Thoughts of what the gun could do.
“We can’t tell anybody about this, Toby,” she finally said, studying his face carefully. “Nobody at school. Not Mama or Papa. Nobody. You understand?”
The boy nodded, the gravity of their shared secret like a heavy weight in his clutched hands.
“Good. I want you to go downstairs and into my room. Okay?”
“But—”
“Go downstairs, Toby. I stashed some cookies in my sock drawer. You want them?”
The thought of such a rare treat almost made him forget the gun and what she might do with it. Any time she invited him into her big bedroom over the garage, he jumped at the chance. He scrambled to his feet and gave the gun one last glance before bounding down the stairs. “I’ll save you one!”
“Thanks, kiddo!” she called back.
They would spend the next hour listening to the radio and playing their favorite game—Do You Remember? Toby hardly remembered a thing from their life before the house. Ava was his memory, and she made all the memories happy ones. Do you remember when Mommy made you that blue birthday cake? Do you remember when Mommy bought you that big yellow truck for Christmas? Do you remember the way Daddy liked to tickle your ribs before bed?