“What’s wrong?”
Eddie Byers sighed and shifted his feet. He pushed Hailey’s hand down gently until the gun faced the ground. “You keep it like that unless you’re specifically aiming,” he told her. “Even when it isn’t loaded.” He reached for a sip from the Coors Lite can he had perched on the patio step, even though it was only eleven thirty in the morning, and kept right on looking at her.
“What?”
“It’s just... after the display I witnessed here on Thanksgiving, I’m a little more hesitant about all this than I normally would be.”
Hailey laughed. “You’re worried that Mack is going to shoot me?”
“I’m more worried about the other way around.”
“Gee, thanks, Dad. He was the one bashing in doors with a golf club, if I remember correctly.”And worse. What would her dad say if he knew what Mack had done?
“I’m serious. Are you two getting along better?”
“I guess,” Hailey told him. “I don’t have any plans to kill him, if that’s what you’re asking. I told you, that break-in scared me to death. It scared us both to death.”
“I’m not surprised. This neighborhood...” He shook his head, and the flaps on his hat swung like elephant ears.
“What?”Hailey said again. “What’s wrong with this neighborhood, exactly? You’re telling me there’s never been a break-in in Akron? How come you need so many guns then?”
“I just don’t see the appeal of all this.” He gestured out over the yard with the hand holding his beer. “You got these big huge houses up here, surrounded on all sides by—”
“By what Dad? Water?”
“By bad neighborhoods. Bad neighborhoods and a big ugly highway.”
“You can’tsaythat.”
He took a last swig of his beer; he set the empty can down next to the gun case. “I can’t say that? I can’t say that the crime statistics are sky-high in East Cleveland, that you paid a whole lot of money to live somewhere where you can’t safely walk down the street ten minutes from your house? God, it’s like you’re barricaded in here, except... except no one’s ever in the gatehouse. And even if they were, is that how you should be living? I’m not surprised you were robbed; you’re here rubbing your richness right in the face of desperate people.”
“I’m not rubbing anything in anyone’s face. It’s... it’s... Bratenahl is its own separate thing. It’s on the other side of an interstate, for God’s sake.”
“All I’m saying is, I’d go insane, trapped in here like this. Marooned in your mansion. It’s likeThe Shining.No wonder you’re all crazy.”
It’s Christmas, Hailey told herself.It’s Christmas, and you’re extra sensitive. Don’t take the bait.
“Please can you just show me how to put the bullets in?”
It was pretty straightforward, it turned out, and Hailey had already practiced it twice by the time the smoke alarm interrupted them. She burst back into the house to find the kitchen hazy and suffocating, and, when she opened the oven, Hailey saw that the breakfast casserole she had thrown together for brunch was black on the top. There was no one around; Mabel and Gigi were probably up in their rooms with their very recently delivered (guaranteed by 10PM on Christmas Eve for Prime Members!) presents, but where was her mother? Her mother was supposed to be watching the casserole.
“Mom?” Hailey called, but the house was quiet. “Mack?”
She grabbed a dishtowel and swung it frantically at the smoke detector until her father reached up over her head and turned it off.
“Where’d everybody go?” he said, and for some reason the calm way he asked the question freaked her out.
“Mack!” she yelled again. “Girls? Hello? Anybody?” She was basically screaming, and she didn’t know why.
“Jesus Hailey, calm down,” her father said at the exact same time her mother appeared in the doorway. Pammy was wearing yellow rubber gloves and holding a cleaning rag.
“What happened in here?”
“Casserole?!” Hailey said. “Remember? Breakfast?”
“Oh shoot! I... I was wiping down the dining room—there’s so much dust I don’t know how we’re going to have dinner in there. Now, Lord knows I didn’t want to use any cleaning fluid, but I do think that table needs something more than water to—”
“Didn’t you hear the timer? Or the smoke alarm?”
