“Mom!” he yelled back. The voice had sounded too young, too childlike to be his mother, but okay.
One thing I appreciated about Max: he was not one of those people who skimped on electricity. As we ran through the house, he flipped on every light in every room we entered, and those we passed as well. The whole bottom of the house was lit up like a Christmas tree by the time we hit the second floor, and I heard a door slam upstairs—the third floor, Grandma’s room.
“Sam will be with her,” Max said grimly. Emily stood in her doorway, lolling against the doorframe, mercifully clothed though clearly drunk out of her mind. She grinned at me as I ran by.
“Boo.” She giggled.
Max didn’t stop at his parents’ closed door. He opened and pushed it wide, bounding into the room. “Dad!”
I didn’t know what to expect when I came racing into Max’s parents’ bedroom, but it wasn’t his dad standing on one side of the room, vibrating with rage, and his mother on the other side, shrinking away from him. They’d seemed like the quintessential American couple—uptight but used to it and each other, willing to suffer in tandem until the bitter end.
Not anymore. A shotgun lay on the bed between them, looking oiled and dangerous even though no one stood closer than five feet to it. Mr. Graham turned as he registered Max’s arrival, his face a mottled red.
“She brought that gun into this house. That bitch—she brought it!” He whirled on his wife. “And you just continue to stand there like everything is fine and it’s all going to be fine, and it isnotgoing to be fine. What Joe did—none of us is ever going to be fine again.”
“It’s not Joe’s gun, Frank!” Judith pleaded. “Emily wouldn’t do that. Itlookslike Joe’s gun, but it isn’t. You know how she is.”
“I know she’s your fucking sister, and she’s done nothing but ruin everything she touches since the moment she came back here.” He swung around like a wounded bear, looking for something to maul. “She should go.”
“Shecan’tgo.” His wife wailed. “She’s hurting, Frank, you know she’s hurting.”
“She’s fucking hurting all right.”
Hearing the f-bomb come out of the mouth of the upright Mr. Graham pinged my creep-o-meter hard to the right. Therewas scared, there was crazy scared, and then there was Frank Graham cursing.
“Dad.” Max rushed toward him, stopping short as his dad swung around again. As tall as Max was, Frank was bigger in almost every way—burlier, tougher. Certainly more desperate. “Dad, it’s okay. I’ll take the gun.”
“Don’t you dare take that gun,” Frank seethed. He looked at the rifle like it was a coiled serpent on the comforter. “Everyone who has touched that gun has come to harm or done unspeakable things. Including yourslut sister.” He turned again on Mrs. Graham, and she crumpled back, looking legitimately terrified.
I stepped forward more quickly than anyone expected, even myself. I walked right up to the gun. I’d never handled a gun before, especially not a rifle, but I could tell which end the bullets came out of. “I’ll take it.”
The words came out of my mouth almost strangely, and everyone stopped for a moment as I snatched up the weapon. It was lighter than I expected it to be, but more dangerous too, and the power that flowed through me like unfurling satin when I pulled it to my body had nothing to do with the supernatural and everything to do with knowing this gun—thisthingcould kill someone. And I held it in my hands.
“Where, Max?”
“I’ll take it?—”
“No!” Frank, Judith, and I all screamed the word at the same time, and Max dropped his hands. Stunned.
“My car,” he said quietly. “Lock it in my trunk. Keys are in the kitchen.”
“Got it.”
I turned and left the room. Emily, thank God, was no longer in the doorway of her bedroom, and I didn’t stop to knock on her door. Part of me thought it was the same gun, no matterwhat Mrs. Graham thought. But that couldn’t be right. Surely the police had confiscated that gun. What if it was the gun Frank had used to shoot the horses?
My stomach turned as I thought about that. I needed to get out of the house, and I picked up the pace, rattling down the stairs even as another cry went up, this one more familiar, but all the worse for it. Sam’s voice, reedy and high, screaming at the top of his little boy lungs.
“No!” He shouted as I hit the first floor of the house, heading for the kitchen and Max’s keys, then banging my way to the front of the mansion and out onto the wide, gracious porch. “No, no, no, no, NO!”
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Istayed outside with the gun for a long time. I didn’t mean to, not really. But I couldn’t figure out how to pop Max’s trunk, and the gun looked so dangerous, sitting in his car all in the open. So I sat and waited until the bedroom lights went off, one by one, and a sweep of porch lights replaced them, soft and hazy in the warm summer’s night.
Max came out another ten minutes after that. He didn’t come all the way to the car at first, but sat on the steps, watching me watch him. It took me a minute to figure out that he didn’t know what I was going to do with the gun. I put the keys in the ignition long enough to roll down the windows.
“I’m not going to shoot you,” I called out across the yard.
