by Vivien Reis
"You two about ready to go?"
"Five more minutes, Mom!" Cora slammed down a four-of-a-kind, making Austin drink. "Three seconds, loser!"
Jesse ignored her comment. "Abi, you ready?"
"Five. More. Minutes!" Cora yelled. She must have been close to winning, nearly standing up as she played.
Her brother checked his phone. Why was he in such a hurry to leave?
"Nooo!" Theo had tried to slap a stack of Cora's cards off the table and in the scuffle, a cup tipped over.
"Oh, come on." Shelly's hands whipped out and plucked up a stack of cards before the puddle spread.
"Time to go!" Jesse bobbed his head and motioned for them to follow.
Abi turned to say goodbye to Myra, but she was already at the table with a handful of napkins. "Bye guys!"
No one looked up as they left, but Theo and Myra said, "See y'all," at the same time. That was the first time Abi had ever heard someone say y'all with an accent like his. She smiled when Theo and Myra shared a grin at their synchronized response.
Cora was busy helping clean the table so Abi headed toward the stairs.
"Wait." Jesse gently grabbed Abi's arm as she passed him. "I never got to finish my story."
Story?
"Oh..."
"Next time." He released her arm.
Abi flashed a brief smile. "Next time." She turned and just barely glimpsed the look Theo shot Jesse before it melted away. It was a hard stare, and he definitely hadn't intended Abi to see it.
It was a look a parent would give a child for acting up.
A look of warning.
# TWELVE
Ben picked at a blade of grass. He pinched it at the middle with both thumbs and pulled them apart, ripping the blade in two.
He picked up another one.
It had been less than a week since Ben found out his dad was brain dead, and there he sat in front of his house, watching movers pack everything away. Two men with large bellies carried their disassembled dining room table out of the house and into the moving truck. Beds, mattresses, appliances, boxes with giant writing on the sides. They took anything of value and carried them piece-by-piece out of the house. If someone broke in again, Gran didn’t want to chance them taking anything.
When they had left Gran's that morning, Ben had every intention of helping, to rip the Band-Aid off and get it over with. But as the hours ticked by, he couldn't force himself to cross the threshold. The floors weren't red, but they were. His eyes saw it in the little cracks of the wood, puddled in the living room and streaking down the hallway.
"No, no, no. You can't put it like that." Gran hoisted herself up into the moving truck, disappearing from sight. She had been directing the men through everything, at times making them take things out and put them back in the way she wanted.
They were volunteers from Gran's church, another member of the congregation waiving the storage unit costs until they figured things out.
If that ever happened.
The past two days had been a haze. Dr. Brandon had given him another prescription that seemed to work well with the other two. He hadn't had another headache, but the pills made him feel slow and drowsy.
"What if Mom comes back?" Abi was sitting next to him on the cold ground, and Ben struggled to remember how long she had been there, silently picking grass with him.
Abi had gone in the house for nearly an hour earlier before coming back out, shaking. No boxes had come from her room yet.
Their life was being left behind, and no matter how practical it was to pack up their things, neither of them could bring themselves to do so.
His little sister didn't want an answer to her question. She had already asked this several times, arguing against packing up their house. If the police tracked their mom down or she turned up somewhere, they would need to move back here. Gran's house was already too small for three people. Add a crazy person to the mix and it would be a zoo.
But Ben and Gran had ruled against Abi. They wouldn't sell the house, but they couldn't leave their stuff behind for someone to ransack. For the interim, they would put their belongings in a storage unit until...well, until something happened to his dad. He didn't want to think about it.
Gran had been adamant that nothing was to happen to the house unless everyone agreed on it. No majority rule—it was all or nothing. They wouldn't sell the house or rent it or move in until all of them agreed to it.
It was fair, but Abi had stormed out of Gran's house. Ben didn't want to move back into their home. She seemed to understand why, now that she’d been unable to stay inside for very long.
"What do you think will happen to us?" Abi asked in a whisper, like the words were a curse.
"I don't know."
She didn't react at all to his response. He was the older sibling. It was his job to give her comforting words, but the truth was he had none. It was hard enough to think past getting through each day, so he hadn't thought ahead to the future at all.
Except now he did, and the thoughts came so fast he couldn't stop them.
His dad would miss his graduation at the end of the year. He wouldn't be there for late night phone calls when Ben was in college or to worry about Abi when she moved off to New York City. He wouldn't see either Ben or Abi get married one day, have children. Ben and Abi's lives flashed before his eyes—all the moments his dad would miss.
Ben swallowed hard. What were they going to do?
"You'll do what you have to," someone said. Had he heard those words? Or did he think them? No one else was around, and Abi was still watching the house. No, he must have thought it. He rubbed at his temples, a headache starting deep inside his brain.
"You'll make whoever did this pay for it."
Yes, yes he would.
Tires crunched against the loose gravel on the street. Ben and Abi turned. It was a police car. Ben jumped to his feet, hardly breathing. Was this it? Had their father died? Did they find their mother? Was she hurt?
There had been two more days of search parties since the knife was found, but nothing and no one had turned up yet.
Gran stopped what she was doing.
"Good morning, folks," the sheriff called out to them, his movements in slow motion. He didn't sound happy, and the panic rose in Ben.
The sheriff and Gran walked toward where Ben and Abi were standing. Gran said something but Ben didn't hear it.
"There's been a development in the case I wanted to discuss with you all today."
The statement entered Ben's ears, but it took a few tries before it assembled into something meaningful. It was about the case. It wasn't his mom or dad. A weight lifted off his shoulders.
"Did you find out who did this?" Gran wiped her hands on her apron.
"We think we have an idea now."
Ben looked from the sheriff to Gran and back again, waiting for the answer. But none came.
"Shall we?" The sheriff motioned toward the porch and they silently filed toward the house.
If the sheriff had found something good, surely he would have said something straightaway.
They stepped onto the porch, and Ben and Abi took a seat on the bench. Ben's skin prickled being so close to the front door, the cold air cutting through his hoodie.
The sheriff removed his hat and pulled out a bandana that was tucked inside, wiping the sweat off his forehead.
They watched him in silence.
"I'm sorry, could I bother you for a glass of water?" The man's throat sounded dry.
Ben thought he saw Gran's eye twitch before she walked into the house. Belmore didn't look at Ben or Abi and no one spoke.
"Here you go," Gran said, handing the cup to him. She hadn't put any ice in it.
The sheriff took three long gulps and then set the water down.
"I came out here as soon as I got word of this. I didn't want any of you hearing about it on the news first."
"Hearing about what?" Gran shifted her weight.
"This is
some heavy news, Mrs. Cole. You might want to take a seat."
"Pardon me, Sheriff Belmore, but spit it out already."
All three of them gaped at Gran's outburst for a moment before Belmore straightened.
"We've found Mr. Cole's car," he blurted. "It was just off Route 9 about two hundred miles north of here."
"And?" Ben's life was held together by tiny pieces of scotch tape. Tape that the sheriff was pulling and tugging at slowly. Slowly.
"Your mother wasn't there but there was blood on the driver's seat. We got a DNA match to Mr. Cole.. We also found trace epithelial cells that put Mrs. Cole in the driver’s seat."
Abi pieced together what he was saying before Ben had a chance to. "What if she had panicked? Found him and panicked and got in his car and left. What if the men who attacked my dad were after her too?" Abi stood up, stepping away from them, sensing something Ben didn’t want to.
How could their mom not be able to use a phone, but be able to drive a car? Ben couldn’t remember the last time she had driven.
"The lab results also came back on the knife found out by Hollow’s Creek." The next part came out in slow succession. "Mrs. Cole's fingerprints were all over it."
A long silence followed.
What was the sheriff trying to say? Of course her fing—
"Of course her fingerprints would be on the knife. She lived there." Gran finished Ben's thought for him.
Which didn't entirely make sense. Mom wasn't allowed to use the knives and hadn't had an interest in anything in the entire kitchen in years. She hardly even used a fork or a spoon when eating.
The sheriff looked at the hat in his hands, rotating it back and forth. "The fingerprints were in blood."
All the breath left Ben as an all-too-vivid image filled his mind. He tried to shake it off but only made the pounding growing in his head worse.
"That doesn't mean she did it." Abi's voice was shrill. "Why? Why would she? My dad took care of her, he loved her."
"Motive is always a concern, but in her mental state, it could have been anything. She could have cheeked her meds for a couple days and snapped."
Some part of it made sense to Ben, but his face still flushed with anger. Who was this man to talk about their mother this way?
"What if she found Adam like that?" Gran's calm was unraveling. "What if the bloody fingerprints got there because she pulled the knife out of his wound?"
This was getting too graphic for Ben. Acid churned in his stomach and burned at his esophagus.
"Reconstruction of the event shows that the last injury likely sustained by Mr. Cole was the damage done to his throat. We believe there was no knife in Mr. Cole when the attack stopped."
Ben couldn't breathe at all anymore and his head was screaming. He was going to be sick.
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but we're issuing an arrest warrant for Mrs. Cole."
"She didn't do it!" Abi sounded like she would have slapped the sheriff had he been within arm's reach of her.
"Abi," Gran warned.
"What? This is insane. Mom would never do something like this." Her eyes were wild and her breathing was heavy.
"She was crazy." Everyone looked at Ben and he realized he had spoken the words. Abi glared at him, tears already forming in her eyes. He wanted to say he was sorry, that he didn't mean it. But the words were true.
Their mother was crazy.
And then Abi ran. Gran called after her, but didn't pursue. She would probably go to Cora's house, anyway.
“We also tracked down the caregiver assigned to your mom, who said Mr. Cole had sent a text that morning saying he didn’t need her to come by that day. We’re still waiting on phone records to corroborate.”
Why would his dad do that? Stacey would always come over while his dad was at work.
"That's not all." The sheriff thumbed at a small fray on the inside of his hat. "Now, I'll admit, we had a snafu on our end and someone took a picture of this without our knowledge during transportation. I wouldn't tell you this if I didn't know you'd see it online later." He took a deep breath. How could there be anything worse? The sheriff had just informed them that Ben's mom was a killer. "We found a painting."
Ben shook his head, not sure why this was important. Mom painted all the time. "A painting in the car?"
"Yes."
Silence extended and twisted at the air, piercing in Ben's ears.
"It was of Mr. Cole. She painted a portrait of him." The sheriff swallowed, a loud croaking noise. "She painted it in blood."
He had done it, ripped the tape off Ben's cracked form. The wind blew and the fragments of Ben's body went with it. Blood. He would never get away from it. It was everywhere. Down by his feet, he saw a tiny red speck.
Ben didn't move.
His mind was racing with one thought: how much blood did it take to do a portrait of someone? He rocked back and forth, picturing his mom hunched over a canvas, a puddle of blood as her paint. What if it really had been their mother who had done this? The images flashed in his mind, stamping themselves there like bright spots from the sun.
No one had kidnapped her and she wasn't in any danger. She was the danger. Mom had run. She was hiding from the police. That was why their father's car had been missing. Because she took it and ran.
But she was practically catatonic. Someone like that couldn't jump in a car and drive. And why would she leave the painting behind? Was she on foot? Questions and questions and more questions erupted all around Ben.
He squeezed at the sides of his head, the pain building.
The sheriff had said it was possible she pocketed her meds for a while. But why would she do that? She had been willingly taking them for years.
"Because the meds were the reason she was catatonic," the voice in his head said.
Yeah, but why now? Why the change?
"She's crazy." The words were simple, but they bounced around, reverberating. "And so are you."
# THIRTEEN
Abi ran through the backyard, racing away from the house. How could this be happening?
Sheriff Belmore was wrong; he had to be. She wiped at her face, her cheeks were already slick with tears. The whole world was closing in to crush her. She kept pushing, the burn in her calves spreading to her thighs and up to her chest. The ice stung her nose and throat but she ran on, shoving limbs out of the way, the roughness like fingernails scratching her skin.
The same question she kept asking Ben: what was going to happen to them? Her family was crumbling and it was only a matter of time before it took her and Ben with it.
Hordes of news vans would be parked outside Gran’s home, more likely on the way to the Cole Murder House. She didn’t want to see them. She didn’t want to see anyone.
Her legs gave out underneath her and she collapsed, oxygen hitching and scratching and burning its way into her lungs.
She couldn't have done it. Her mom wasn't capable of that.
Abi recalled the stories her mom used to tell before she got sick. Stories about how she and Abi's dad had met at a hamburger joint named Ralph’s and it was love at first sight. How for the first five years of their marriage, they went back to that same hamburger place to celebrate their anniversary and share a vanilla shake. Mom had said she was drunk on happiness.
How could someone do that to someone they loved? Abi's stomach roiled, and she threw up in the underbrush. She crawled away from the vomit but didn't make it far. She lay down flat, covering the tiny pathway, feeling the icy cold of the hard ground soak through her backpack and spread down her spine.
She pushed the world away and concentrated on her breath. Just her breath. Air. In and Out.
It wasn’t enough. She breathed harder, an elephant sitting on her ribcage, her chest heaving. Trembling breath in. Trembling breath out. She closed her eyes, willing the rising panic to –
SNAP.
Abi jerked upright, her head swimming. The sun had started its descent and her eyes had a hard
time focusing in the dimming light. She scanned her surroundings, her heart hammering in her chest. What if the men had come back for her? She was all alone.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She got up slowly, uncertain where the noise had come from. Maybe it had been an animal. What if it was a wild animal, like a coyote? What the hell were you supposed to do in a coyote attack? She had learned on TV all about bear attacks, but nothing about coyotes.
Or what if it was a bobcat?
Her eyes were so wide they stung with pain, but still she saw nothing.
Abi took a slow step back. How far had she come? She hadn't even been paying attention. She could be miles from the house and no one would hear her scream.
Leaves rustled behind her—crunching leaves that had fallen from the branches above.
Abi spun. A white animal crouched behind an oak tree ahead of her. She froze, squinting to making it out in the dim lighting. Was it a wolf? She scrambled to think of what white animals there could be in these woods.
And then it stood up. Its body lengthened, growing taller and taller until it was just bigger than she was. Fear gripped Abi's chest so tightly she couldn't turn, she couldn't scream, she couldn't run.
The thing moved from behind the tree.
It was her mom.
Dark spots stained her nightdress and her hair was a matted mess of sticks and leaves. The police had been right; she had taken a coat and her boots to withstand the cold. She looked feral, her face twisting in confusion like she was seeing a ghost.
She was nearly thirty feet away from Abi, but it was too close. The dark stains on her nightdress didn't look like mud. Had her mom been out here since the attack?
"Abi?" Her voice was hoarse, like she hadn't spoken in days. Her eyes cleared and she smiled, a smile Abi hadn't received since she was a little girl. For the first time in years, she felt like her mom was actually seeing her.
"Mom?" What was she doing? This woman was dangerous. Wasn't she?
Her mom's thin arm reached up, her hand covering her mouth. "You've grown up so much."
What? She spoke as if she hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen Abi grow up with her own eyes. Abi shoved the thoughts away, staring at the blood on her mom's clothing.