Heavy silence. Pre-explosion teen anger billowing out into the room, eating up the oxygen. I used the pamphlet as cover to palm the two vials, slip them into my shirtsleeve, shifting on the bedcovers to mask the sound of the crinkling packages they were sealed in. It was a minute or so before I could naturally get my hand to my hip, poke the two vials into my jeans pocket with all the joy and relief of a guy hitting the cash-out button on a jackpotting poker machine. I didn’t know exactly why, then, it seemed so important to make the ancestry kit thing impossible for Chris. But his being at Redbelly, meknowinghe’d been there, had lit a fuse in my brain. When the vials were in my pocket, I had the cold-sweat feeling of someone who’d tripped at the top of a long flight of stairs andcaught themselves before the fall. I cleared my throat. ‘So, I’m seeing here that there’s supposed to be two collection vials.’
Chris didn’t answer. I put the pamphlet on the only spare spot on the desk. Made a show of rumpling through the rest of the box. ‘I’m not seeing those vials.’
Chris took the box from me. Looked at the pamphlet. Unfolded the instruction sheet so that it was as big as an old-style tourist map. Did the whole routine once more. ‘Where are the fucking vials?’
‘Maybe they—’
‘Stand up.’ Chris was out of his chair, waving at me to get off the bed. ‘Did you drop them?’
‘No.’
Looking under the bed. Going back to the box. Running a finger down the two grooves where the vials had lain. ‘So where are they?’
‘No idea.’
Chris did one more run-through of the search. Then he stopped, straightened, and looked at me. I met my son’s eyes, and I heard a voice deep in my head that was half my own, and half my father’s.
Try it, you little shit.
‘Did you take them?’ Chris asked.
‘No,’ I said. We held each other’s gaze. Then Chris tried it. He lunged at my pocket. I felt an exhilarated, joyful rush crash into the violence already simmering in my chest. The genetic badness. It was all I could do to make the blow to the kid’s face a firm but harmless palming and not a slap, as Chrissy came at me and I buffeted him away. His cheeks were immediately beetroot red with humiliation.
‘What thefuck, Dad!’
‘I don’t have your vials.’
‘Yes you do.’
‘I have played nicely with you for as long as I can on this, Chris. But—’
‘This is you playing nicely?’ His eyes were big and swimming in alcohol. ‘Fuck you! You’re constantly badmouthing your own father, trying to tell me you’re the nice guy in all this.Fuckyou!’
‘Right back at ya, kid.’
‘Did you ever wonder whether Pop is the way he is because he’s had to deal withyouhis whole life?’
I tried to control the urge to strangle my child. Actually saw myself doing it, a flash behind my eyelids. When I could finally speak, the words came out in a voice that was thick with evil. ‘Chris.’
‘What?’
‘I’m gonna tell you who you’re trying to “make a connection” with,’ I said carefully. I wanted to scream. The ends of my words pulled upwards, trying to climb, trying to let the rage take over. ‘I’m gonna tell you the truth. You wanted it, here it is.’
Delle was in the room suddenly. She put a hand on my arm. I couldn’t even feel the weight of it.
‘When we were kids, Dad bought Russell and me a dog each,’ I said. ‘They were border collies. I had the girl. Russell had the boy. We couldn’t believe it. We were hysterical with joy. Our mother had just killed herself the year before—’
‘Evan, stop,’ Delle said.
‘Shut up!’ I roared at her. She snatched her hand away like my skin was burning hot. I turned back to Chris. ‘We figured Arthur was trying to make us happy. Which was something he’d never done in our lives. Not once. He was being weird and giving us these dogs and smiling and letting us sleep with them on the ends of our beds, and we just didn’t question it because we were too excited.’
Chrissy was watching me, his mouth pulled downwards, the chat rolling up the laptop screen faster and faster behind him.
‘Three months, we had those dogs,’ I said. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. ‘They went everywhere with us. They would wait at the gate for us to get home from school every day. Then one day Arthur came and told us we couldn’t afford to feed them both anymore. We had to get rid of one. And he wasn’t just talking aboutrehoming the dog, Chris, like a normal person would do. He was talking about taking that dog out the back of the property and shooting it.’
Chris’s head snapped back hard, the way it had when I’d palmed him off. ‘What?’
‘He told us to fight. Me and Russell. The winner got to keep his dog.’
