“Should we say something?” Olive asked again.
Ben said nothing.
“Mum?” Olive called.
More jangling.
“Yes,” Mum said quietly.
Ben’s shoulders dropped. He released a staggered breath. Then he snapped the flashlight back on, lowered the shovel, and moved quickly to the hole, brushing sawdust down into the night. He jammed the three floorboards into place as best he could with the nails getting in the way, then he grabbed the metal handle of the trunk and shoved it back into position.
Someone fiddled with the padlock.
Ben looked to the floor to see if everything was clear. The knife lay there, covered in sawdust. He grabbed it, snapped it shut, and pocketed it just as the door opened.
“Pack the car,” Dad said, charging into the cabin. Ben trained the flashlight on him as he went to the table and began shoving things into a bag.
“What?” Ben asked.
“Don’t say ‘What.’ And get that flashlight off me. Anything you want, pack it in the car. Make it light. No heavy stuff. It’s got to go in your backpack. We leave in a few hours.”
Ben stabbed the flashlight beam at Mum. She stood in the doorway, handbag hanging limply from her shoulder, exhausted, haggard, her cheeks smudged with eye makeup. Ordinarily Ben would have hugged her, seen if she was okay. But not now. Olive stood, arms crossed, back turned in protest.
Dad headed out the door with a bag and a cardboard box.
“Where were you?” Ben asked.
“We’ve got to go,” Mum said.
That was all.
Ben wanted to shout at her but was too shell-shocked to speak. He wished that he and Olive had not turned back. He wished he was still tramping through the darkness to the river, surrounded by shhhhh and other night sounds. Forests are supposed to be dark and unknown. Parents are not. He wondered if he would ever again find his mother’s shhhhh as comforting as he found the sound of that river.
Mum went to Olive, bent down, tried to hug her, but Olive shrugged her off and moved away, arms still folded, back still turned. Ben wished that Mum was as strong as Olive. He went to the door. The car was parked across the clearing under a low tree. Hidden. They had come down the road so quickly and then hidden the car and said that they were leaving. Was someone chasing them? Did they have the passports?
“Why didn’t you leave a note?” Ben asked. “You always leave a note. Tell us what’s going on.”
Mum stared at him. Ben could feel the pressure of all the unspoken truths thickening the air between them. “We just—” she began, and Ben waited, hungry, needing to hear something, anything, but she changed her mind. “Just get your things.”
* * *
After twenty minutes of packing the car, Mum and Dad ate dinner by flashlight at the table—cold tomato soup from a can and bread. Mum mainly looked at hers and stirred it. Dad watched the window, looking up the hill. Ben sat with them, a brick in his gut: a solid block of unanswered questions, unknown parts of the story. Olive slept, thumb-sucking, her breathing jerky and fitful.
“Where did you go today?” Ben asked.
Dad licked butter off his knife and swallowed bread in lumps.
“We had to arrange some things,” Mum said.
“What? Where are we going? Can we go home?”
“No, Ben,” Mum said. “Not home.”
“We’re sorting out a plan,” Dad said, not taking his eyes off the window.
“Would you guys mind if we don’t go on any more vacations? They kind of suck,” Ben said.
Dad eyed him.
“I just want to go home. I miss making my movie. I—”
“Don’t use your whiny voice,” Mum warned.
Yeah, Ben thought. Me using my whiny voice is the big problem here. If I just used a normal speaking voice everything would be fine.
“We’ll catch some sleep and leave around two,” Dad said.
Ben tried to sit there and be okay with the not-knowing. After all, he was just a kid and they were adults and this was best for him. They knew. They would take care of him. They were his parents. He tried not to say anything, but the words exploded.
“Why do you listen to him?” he asked Mum. “Why don’t you stand up for yourself? You would never have left us like that. Why did you?”
Her chin wobbled, she lowered her head.
“That’s enough!” Dad said.
Ben had to get out of there, not be near them, or he would tell them how irresponsible they were, tell them that if they ever locked him and Olive up again …
He stood, grabbed his backpack, threw his things in, walked out of the cabin.
“Oi!” Dad said, but Ben kept moving. “Back here. Now!”
Ben slowed just outside the cabin door. He had always listened when his father had spoken. Until yesterday he had never even questioned his father to his face, but whatever bond they had was broken now. This “vacation,” whatever his parents had done wrong, the lies, reading his notebook. Everything was in pieces. Ben continued across the clearing.
He would sit in the car until they left. He would not go back inside that cabin, ever. He ripped the car door open, jumped in, and slammed it as hard as he could. He slammed it so hard that the glass in the window shattered and fell like a thousand tiny raindrops. They landed in the car, on Ben’s lap, on the window frame, on the ground.
Ben stared in disbelief.
He looked back to the cabin, expecting his father to tear across the clearing like a lunatic. But he didn’t. The slamming door must have covered the sound of the shattering glass. He opened the door, stood, and brushed glass jewels off his lap onto the silvery sand. The moon had pushed its way through the clouds above. He dusted chunks off the window frame and the car seat and he sat back down, clicking the door closed.
He let the breath fall from him and licked his dry lips.
Did a broken window mean seven years’ bad luck? Or was that only mirrors? Either way, Ben felt that his seven years had begun a few days earlier.
Something good will happen. Something good always happens. Tears welled but his eyes swallowed them in gulps. Ben was scared. His parents were scared, so he was scared. Parents were supposed to know the answers. Or to at least pretend they knew.
He was sitting in the back, behind the driver’s seat. In the moon-glow he could see the front passenger seat, the gearstick, and half the dashboard. Just above the gearstick, in a groove that looked as though it could hold another stereo, Ben could see a phone. Dad or Mum’s new phone.
He looked out the window, back toward the cabin. He could hear raised voices and the dull thunk of footsteps on floorboards but no one was coming across the clearing. The brick in Ben’s stomach grew heavy and sharp at the edges. It gave him physical pain, and his tears fell down his cheeks then. He wiped at them and told himself not to be a baby. He didn’t need Dad to tell him that anymore.
Ben didn’t want to do what he was about to do. If Dad hadn’t read his notebook, if they hadn’t been locked in the cabin, he would never have done something like this. But these things had happened. He leaned through to the front and took the phone from the cavity. He pressed a button and the screen came to life with a picture of his mum in the front seat, looking up into the camera—posing, big sunglasses, one raised brow. Ben glanced back at the cabin again. He swiped the screen, making his mother disappear.
Evidence. Ben wondered if a real detective would do this. Or if it was unethical. He typed in “6688,” the same code as her old phone, then hit the “message” button. No messages. He hit the “phone” button. Three dialed numbers. One from 7:15 a.m. today, which meant that they must have left before that time. One from 8:22 a.m. and one at 3:48 p.m. Ben didn’t recognize any of them.
Ben turned to the cabin again. They were moving around. No voices now. Ben had come to fear silence almost as much as he feared the arguments.
He pulled the notebook from his backpack, took the pen out, and jotted the d
ialed phone numbers in tiny writing near the spine on one of the torn middle pages. Ben knew that it was dangerous to use the notebook again, but he hoped that the numbers would not be seen if someone flicked through quickly.
Ben tapped a few other icons but found nothing interesting. There was a selfie of Mum, and one or two shots of Dad driving, silhouetted against the blurred background. That was it.
He clicked on a folder labeled “Web” and discovered two icons. He hit the first. Nothing. He clicked the second, an orange “M” logo, and there were seven open pages. He tapped one, then another, looking for anything even slightly suspicious.
He tapped a page for a news site search on “Ray Silver,” and his eyes rested on a picture that made the brick in his belly twist and turn.
Two pictures, actually. And a headline.
APRICOTS
“Apricots?” Mum asked, offering Ben an open can of fruit with a spoon in it.
Ben shook his head.
“Whipped cream?” Dad said.
Ben looked at his father and took the can of whipped cream, spraying some into the middle of a paper plate.
They sat and ate quietly to the sound of Olive sleep-breathing and the wild noises from outside.
“What’s wrong with you?” Dad asked.
“Cat got your tongue?” Mum said.
Ben felt as though he had been transported into an alternative universe. How could they be talking about apricots and whipped cream and cats’ tongues, knowing what they knew, what Ben now knew?
Mum had come out of the cabin soon after Ben discovered the news article. He had thrown the phone back into the dash compartment and moved quickly to meet her halfway across the clearing, trying to stop her from seeing the smashed window.
“Come back to the cabin. Have some dessert, get some sleep before we go,” she had said. So Ben, guilty, mind roaring, floated back to the cabin.
“Are you over your little performance now?” Dad asked, serving himself another helping of whipped cream. “Storming off to the car like a three-year-old.”
Ben tasted a small spoonful of whipped cream. It felt thick in his throat. He rested the spoon back on the table.
“It’ll work out,” Dad said.
“Maybe we’ll go somewhere with a pool. And room service,” Mum added.
Ben stared at her, the pores of her skin, that terrible haircut. He almost didn’t recognize his own mother. It’s a weird day when you realize that your parents aren’t who you think they are. Ben wondered if there would come a time when he would realize that he, himself, was not who he thought he was, that he was someone totally different. Someone capable of doing what his parents had done.
Bank Error in Your Favor. That’s what the news headline had said on Mum’s phone. Then the story … bank mistakenly deposited the funds into Silver’s account … Silver transferred the money to an offshore account … the bank has not yet discovered where …
“I’d like to tell Ben where we’re going,” Mum said.
Dad looked at her, small trickles of whipped cream gathering at the corners of his mouth. “It’s a surprise,” he said, straight-faced. Something caught his eye, and he tipped his head to the right, looking out the window and up the hill.
“What?” Mum asked, alert.
“Nothing.” But Dad continued to look as they waited, holding their breath. “It’s nothing,” he said finally, turning back to his dessert. He took the last scoop and stood, going over to the ice chest. He searched inside it as Mum and Ben sat quietly, looking at each other.
“Who ate my chocolate?” he asked, looking up at Ben. “Did you?”
Ben nodded. He wasn’t scared anymore.
“Why did you do that?”
Ben did not answer.
“You can clean up the dishes, chuck them into that garbage bag,” Dad said. “I should be able to trust you.” He gave Ben a little whack on the back of the head.
Offshore account … Ben remembered what the article had said … Ray and April Silver … police asking for witnesses who may have seen them. He had read this before he had thrown the phone back into the empty cavity on the dashboard. Offshore. Overseas.
“Let’s go,” Dad said. “Ben, clean up. Now.”
Ben gathered the plates together, and his mind crunched through the contents of the article. One fragment of a line turned over and over in his mind more than any other.
… Seven point two million dollars …
He couldn’t get that number out of his head. Seven point two million dollars. The amount they had stolen. Offshore account—where the rest of the money must be.
“Seven point two million dollars.” He said the words as he threw the paper plates into the bag. Not loud, but loud enough for them to hear.
Mum and Dad stopped what they were doing.
“What’d you just say?”
“I said … seven point two million dollars,” Ben repeated.
Dad flew across the room and grabbed him by the neck of his T-shirt, pressing him against the rough log wall.
“You’re a real little smart aleck,” he said into Ben’s face, too close to focus.
“Ray!” Mum barked.
“Why did you do it?” Ben asked. “Why didn’t you tell us? Are you going to give it back?”
“Shut up,” Dad said, stabbing a finger at him. “Don’t say another word. No more questions.”
Ben wanted to ask another question so bad. He didn’t even know what he wanted to ask, but he still wanted to ask it. Dad pressed him harder into the wall. Ben heard the cotton stitching on his T-shirt tear. Dad maintained his grip, staring into Ben’s face for the longest time. His watery eyes seemed to swim with a thousand disturbing thoughts.
But Ben said nothing.
“Useless.” Dad released his grip and walked out of the cabin, shouting into the night like a beast.
THINK I BETTER RUN
“Everything will be okay. I promise,” Mum whispered. She was running her fingers through Ben’s hair, tears falling hot and heavy down her cheeks.
Ben was tucked in bed, eyes closed but wide awake, fully clothed. It was after midnight. Dad snored. Olive made sweet thumb-sucking sounds from time to time. Mum sat on the edge of Ben’s air mattress. Ben wanted to open his eyes and tell her about the hole that he had sawed, ask her to come with him, but she would stop him. He knew that. There was no way she would let him run alone. Her tears fell on his face when she pressed close.
“It’ll be good when we leave here. It was a mistake to come. We’ll go someplace better. I promise.”
Ben listened.
“Things will be different from now on, but we need to stick together.”
Stick together.
“You must trust me, okay?” Mum whispered into the darkness. “It’ll be all good.”
Trust.
“Why are you doing this?” Ben asked.
She was silent for a long time. Then she said, “I don’t know what else to do.”
“Yes, you do. Don’t listen to him. Listen to yourself.”
She cried in short, painful sobs that shook Ben’s air mattress. “I don’t think I know how.”
Ben turned over, away from her. It felt like a terrible thing to do but he had heard enough. His decision was made.
Soon she stopped stroking his hair. She stood awkwardly, stumbling, almost falling on him. She lay down on her own bed.
Someplace better.
Trust me.
It’ll be all good.
Ben didn’t like it when people said it’s “all good.” People only said that when things were not good at all.
Seven point two million dollars.
You could do a lot with seven million dollars. You could buy lots of stuff. Maybe they would buy him whatever he wanted, to keep him quiet. Offshore account. That’s what the article had said. Wherever the offshore account was, that was where they were going, Ben was certain. He didn’t want to go anywhere. Only home. Maybe they would live in Switzerland.
Or the Cayman Islands. In movies, wasn’t that where people hid money that wasn’t theirs?… Mistakenly deposited the funds … If the bank put it into their account by accident, even though Mum and Dad transferred it out, wasn’t it theirs? Didn’t it belong to them now? Wasn’t that just bad luck for the bank? Finders keepers. Maybe Ben’s parents could keep it. Was Ben a millionaire? Technically, he was. Could life on the run with millions of dollars be good?
Maybe.
Sure.
Yes.
But if your parents were criminals, did that mean that you were more likely to become a criminal too?
What would Sam Gribley do? The kid in the book. Sam Gribley would run into the mountains and live in a hollowed-out tree and survive off the land. Sam Gribley would eat tubers and weird berries and make a fishing hook out of a twig and train a falcon. Ben wanted to do these things too. Even though he didn’t know what a tuber was. Sam Gribley would do what was right, Ben was sure of it. Sam Gribley would run.
And that was what Ben would do. He would do what was right. He would run, and he would tell someone what he knew. He didn’t want to leave Mum, but she had made this choice, not him. The choice to take the money. And Dad. They chose this.
His decision made him feel sick. His breathing was tight, measured, silent. He waited like this in the darkness, every muscle tensed. Fifteen or twenty minutes passed.
If he was going to get away it needed to be soon. Before Dad woke up and made them get in the car. Dad was a faster runner than him. He had leg length. He could take Ben down like a wolf chasing a rabbit. Eat him alive. Black and crispy on the outside, raw in the middle.
Ben could hear his mother sleep-breathing now, deep and slow. Dad began to snore again. This was his chance. He carefully, quietly, peeled back the sleeping bag. He tried to mold it into a human shape, which might buy him a few precious moments if they woke.
Ben looked over to Olive’s bed next to his.
Olive.
He couldn’t take her with him. It would be dangerous.
But leaving her behind could be too. Ben’s parents were wanted criminals.
She looked so innocent, her face calm and open. Ben felt bad for all the horrible things he had ever done to her. He wished he had always been kind. But he would leave her. He couldn’t take care of her. And he could not face telling her the very bad thing that their parents had done. They would have to tell her. Ben stood, and a floorboard creaked. Why had he not noticed that sound in the day?
On the Run Page 9