Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)(40)

She begs, seriously begs, for Internet permission, which Mr. Esparza finally, reluctantly grants, but only for thirty minutes, and he warns her he’s set up the parental controls just the way Mom requested. Not surprised; Mom’s serious about that stuff, and she has good reason.

I drift over and watch what she’s doing, because Lanny’s in a weird mood, and I don’t know why.

She just pulls up pictures, that’s all. School pictures of her friends, out of her secret cloud account Mom doesn’t know about. After about two minutes of staring, I realize every picture has the same person in it.

I lean over her chair and say, “Are you crushing on your best friend?”

Lanny goes nuclear. Her face turns streaky scarlet, she shoves me back against the counter, she yells, “Leave me alone,” then flees into her bedroom and slams the door hard enough that the pictures flap on the walls.

I look at the picture of Dahlia Brown. She’s pretty. I always thought she was. “Totally crushing on you,” I tell the picture. No wonder Lanny was so crazy. She probably didn’t want anybody to know, and here I was, knowing.

The front door opens, and Mr. Esparza looks in, sees me, and says, “What was that?”

I shrug. “Nothing.” He knows it isn’t nothing, but I clear the browser and shut the laptop and pick up my book instead of telling him anything else, and he finally shuts the door. He’s cleaning a gun out on the porch, all the parts laid out on a clean towel, and I can smell the oil he uses from in here.

Lanny’s got a secret. I feel a surge of glee about that, but I won’t tell. We don’t do that. We don’t spill on each other, not unless it’s life or death. This isn’t, but she probably feels like it is. I feel kind of bad about embarrassing her. And she made me Rice Krispies treats.

I go back and open the laptop, find the pictures again, and print one out. I write on the back of it: It’s okay if you like her, you know. I slide it under my sister’s door, close down the computer again (because if I didn’t, I might sit down and look up stuff I know I shouldn’t, like news about the search for Dad), and step outside onto the porch. Mr. Esparza’s bent over working on the barrel of a shotgun, but when he sees me, he straightens up and groans a little. “Getting colder out here,” he says. “She all right?”

I nod. I don’t tell him she’s got a secret girlfriend. “She’s in her room,” I tell him.

He gives me a long look, and I make sure I’m staring somewhere else. “And you? You all right, Connor?”

I shrug. I don’t know how to answer that. What does all right look like?

“You know you can talk to me if you need to.”

I settle onto the steps, and Boot the dog comes and flops next to me. I stroke his head, and he licks his chops and rests his head on my leg. It’s heavy. I’ve never seen him really mad, but I can imagine it’s pretty scary.

“You know about my dad,” I say. I’m staring at the trees beyond the fence. They’re rustling and swaying in the wind, and overhead the clouds look like moving metal.

“Yeah, a little bit.” Mr. Esparza’s being careful about that. He probably knows a lot more than a little. “Doesn’t feel good, does it?”

“What?” I know what he means. But I don’t want to let him think that.

“Thinking your dad’s done something terrible.”

I shake my head. I don’t know if I’m just generally saying It doesn’t feel good, or rejecting something else. I don’t know how I feel anymore. “Mom doesn’t talk about it.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Mr. Esparza nods and goes back to working on his gun. It’s familiar. I remember Mom doing that same thing, carefully breaking the guns apart, cleaning and oiling and putting them back together. He’s neater about it than Mom. Everything’s lined up straight on the cloth. “You mind if I talk about it?”

I shrug again. Can’t stop adults from doing what they want. And I’m curious, anyway.

“I know about what he did. They had it in the papers, online, on the news. Not that I was following the story, but I couldn’t avoid it. Everybody said it had to be some kind of monster to do things like that. You hear people say that?”

I nod this time. I heard it. Lots.

“He’s not a monster,” Mr. Esparza says. “He has a monster inside him.”

“What’s the difference?”

“It’s still okay to think of him as a person, if you want to. But just don’t forget: he’s still got the monster.”

“Like he’s possessed,” I say. “Like in the horror movies.” Not that Mom lets us watch horror movies. But I sometimes watch them with my friends, when she doesn’t know.

“Not exactly. Possessed people can’t help what they do. Your dad made choices.” Mr. Esparza hesitates, and I can tell he has to choose his words carefully. “You know I used to be a marine, right? A soldier?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve seen people make those choices. Maybe they love their families. Love their pets. But that doesn’t stop them from being monsters when they get the chance. People are complicated. It’d be easy to call your dad a monster, because then it’s easy to talk about killing him, because we kill monsters, right? But he wasn’t always a monster to you. I get that. And it shouldn’t be easy to kill. Ever.”