White Rabbit(8)

“Ruf—”

“Please, Mom, just … tell me.” I’ve made my way to the rear of the cottage now, and I lean tiredly over another porch rail, crickets underscoring the deceptively tranquil view of dark water spreading toward the far shore. The moon glares brightly down at the Whitneys’ cottage like the spotlight from a police helicopter, and I duck my head. “Whatever it is, my imagination’ll only make it worse.”

“We owe the bank about eight grand,” my mother confesses miserably, “and, okay, it’s kind of … urgent.” It’s only the fourth of the month, and she’s already panicked enough to appeal to my father; that means this is an old debt, a compounded one, and she’s starting to get desperate. “I can scrape together about a quarter of it if I can get your uncle Connor to pay back the money I loaned him last Christmas. But…”

She trails off, my stomach heaves again, and just like that I feel the phantom grip of Fox’s cooling fingers at the base of my neck. I called my mom about a murder and now we’re talking about the chance that we might lose our house? The ground seems to tilt sharply under my feet, pressure grips at my chest, and I struggle for air.

My mom’s all I’ve got; my whole life, it’s just been the two of us, holding hands to ride out the storm; and too often, the storm has been me. Somewhere inside me lurks a volatile Mr. Hyde, an alter ego driven by an engine of combustible anger I’ve only recently found any success in mastering. Swept up in the inner hurricane of my rage, I’ve screamed and ranted, broken dishes and bones, terrorized my teachers—and provided my father with ammunition in his agenda against us. How many phone calls has she gotten from school officials over the years because I lost control and broke the glass on a trophy case or attacked someone in class?

And she’s stood by me through all of it. I owe her so much. I owe her everything. How much more can she take? My mouth clicks dryly, my free hand tightening on the wooden rail. “I’ve been working all year, Mom. I can help—”

“No. Absolutely not, no way!” She’s so vehement I can practically hear her hand karate-chopping the air. “I will not let you spend your money on this, Rufus Holt. Do you hear me? These are my mistakes, not yours, and if—if—”

She stops altogether, and I can picture her again: glasses in her lap, fingers pressed hard against her lips, mouth trembling as she tries not to cry. The lake smears in front of me, black and gray and blue all running together, and I blink hard. None of this is fair. “It affects me, too, Mom. It’s my house, too.”

“I’ll take care of it. If I have to sell my organs on the black market, I will handle it. Okay?” She puts some steel in her tone. “Your shithead sperm donor owes us so much by now I would own this fucking place outright if he’d pay up.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I mumble weakly.

“I’m sorry, kiddo. All that … let’s strike it from the record and start over. What did April do this time?”

Reflexively, I turn around and peer back into the cottage through the broad French doors of the family room. The fixtures of the kitchen gleam menacingly at the front of the house, and Sebastian stands near the fireplace, watching me with brightly nervous eyes and radiating an inarticulate terror of being alone inside with a corpse. I know I should tell her what we’ve found … but how can I? She’s already in a lousy place; the first thing she’d do would be call the police—or, worse, Peter—and there would go any chance for me to take control of my involvement in the situation.

I’m not exactly one of the Bad Kids, but my history of anger-related behavioral issues are well documented, and cops don’t really seem to care much about your GPA when they already remember you from the time you lost your shit in the eighth grade and knocked a bully’s tooth out with the back of a chair. Especially when your own father prosecuted the bully’s subsequent lawsuit against the school district and publicly called you a “dangerous animal.” Thanks to a good therapist and the right medication, my moods have stabilized a lot since then, but the president of the school board is just waiting for the proper excuse to expel me—and having been suspended once this year already, my situation is precarious.

I haven’t thought things out, I realize; once my mom learns what’s happened, there will be no taking it back. I need to know more. I just need a little more time.

“It’s nothing,” I mumble at last. “Don’t worry about it.”

As I disconnect, though, it is with the distinct sensation that—somehow, in some way—the Covingtons have just ruined my life yet again.





3

“Who were you talking to?” Sebastian demands the second I let myself back in through the doors of the family room, stepping carefully around the glass fragments that litter the glossy floorboards. The music is off now, and so is the sound of water rushing through the pipes in the bathroom. April is done with her shower. “I thought you said we shouldn’t call the cops!”

“Five minutes ago, you wanted to call the cops,” I point out, startled by his about-face. From my new perspective, in the middle of the family room, the disarranged furniture looks like evidence of a struggle; the chairs have been knocked rather than pushed aside, and the glass inset of the coffee table is feathered with cracks.