Tom smiled, happy that I was on board. He wanted me fixed and back at Helshire, mentoring him. He wanted everything back to normal.
Things had never been normal.
“It sucks that some of us don’t make it,” he said. “But it’s always been that way. No reason to turn against your own family.”
I nodded, not explaining that killing Peter hadn’t been enough to change me. Peter had been almost nothing.
Tom bit into his sandwich, chewed. “I felt guilty too.”
“Why?”
“The week before he died, Grandma Elizabeth called me to her room. She asked if he was still bullying me.”
“Peter bullied all the little kids.”
“Not as bad as me—because I left Doctor Pickle behind in the woodshed. Peter said second rabbits don’t count, and my mors curae wasn’t real, and they should have culled me. He said I was pathetic for not helping kill Uncle Max. I just stood there and watched while you three did it.”
“Gertie didn’t help either.”
“She ran to get Arabella, and she didn’t leave her rabbit behind.”
“You were seven years old, Tom.”
“I was a Morton. Anyway, Grandma asked if it was okay if Peter never came home from Helshire. I said it was fine with me.”
I heard my mother’s words:Grandmother chooses her counselors. Four of us.
Tom was the one I’d never guessed.
“I had no idea what was going to happen,” he said. “But I don’t regret what I said—Peter was fucked up.”
I locked eyes with him. “And why do you think that was?”
Tom looked away. “He was weird from the start. He liked fires too much. But, yeah, that day with Uncle Max changed him.”
“It changed all of us.”
“Not you, Aunt Jessica. You were exactly the same. I decided to be like you.”
I closed my eyes. I had been Tom’s model, so he’d become a model Morton. No room for uncertainty or rebellion.
Next year, Ezekiel, Leona, and Clyde would be even harder to convince. They’d known Uncle Max, but hadn’t been in the woodshed that day to see him turn into a monster.
The Morton line of Care couldn’t fizzle out. Ms. Delicato always said that criminal organizations without accountants were doomed. Surely the same held for revolutions.
I had to keep trying. “Do you know why Uncle Max didn’t change me?
Tom shrugged. “Because you’re a Morton.”
“Because I had to prove I wasn’t like him.” Because he was my father. Because my mother had taken to her bed. Being a prodigy was an escape from myself.
“You’d never be like Uncle Max,” Tom said. “Peter never bullied me when you were around. He didn’t dare.”
“He shouldn’t have bullied you anywhere.”
“Aunt Minerva said I made the logical choice, leaving Doctor Pickle behind—one less thing to slow me down. It’ll be so easy, Jess. She’s right outside, unarmed.”
The last bite of sandwich in my mouth turned to sawdust. I kept chewing, and managed to swallow.
