THE ENIGMATIC HUES E-Book

MEGHA .

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Finn Hushton is harbouring two terrible secrets: his involvement in the drowning death of his cousin, and a night of drunken love with his best friend’s mother, Charlotte, whom he finds dead in a bathtub of blood. Guilt forces Finn to act on impulse and hide his involvement with Charlotte.

Detective Matthews William knows Finn is hiding something. But as the investigation progresses, William’s attention are focused on some other suspects. What was the reason for Charlotte’s bloody death and the mysterious turns it takes to find the real sinner?

Is it better that some secrets are left buried?

Leseprobe

MEGHA .

THE ENIGMATIC HUES

SOME SECRETS BETTER LEFT UNSAID

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

1

Description

Finn Hushton is harbouring two terrible secrets: his involvement in the drowning death of his cousin, and a night of drunken love with his best friend’s mother, Charlotte, whom he finds dead in a bathtub of blood. Guilt forces Finn to act on impulse and hide his involvement with Charlotte.

Detective Matthews William knows Finn is hiding something. But as the investigation progresses, William’s attention are focused on some other suspects. What was the reason for Charlotte’s bloody death and the mysterious turns it takes to find the real sinner?

Is it better that some secrets are left buried?

1.

Second chances were the only thing that twenty two-year-old Finlay Hushton needed to believe. Trying to regain his composure, he paced the deck behind his best friend’s house in Vieste, a small town in the Foggia district of Italy. He needed someone to listen and tell him everything would be okay. The mauve cummerbund around his waist seemed to tighten.

The sun was setting and a sprinkling of rust, violet, and golden clouds gathered above the jagged peaks of the Vieste Mountains. A pale bruise-colored sky seeped through the Saguaros’ giant arms. He wiped his palms on his pant legs. His starched tuxedo shirt made the back of his neck itch and he turned his head from one side to the other.

Through the sliding glass door, he saw Amron’s mother standing in the middle of the kitchen, pivoting on her feet as if she were slow dancing. Charlotte was a slender, curvy woman with big eyes, a small nose and full lips. She had a mass of curling blonde hair like her son. She wore her waitress uniform—a short denim skirt, red leather cowboy boots, a low-cut white blouse with a red bandanna tied round her neck. A bottle of beer swung like a pendulum between her thumb and forefinger. He rapped on the glass, averting his gaze from the deep dark eyes.

She cocked her head as she opened the sliding glass door. Two black mascara streaks ran down her face. “If it weren’t for your outfit, I’d think you’d been to a funeral,” he said. “Why are you so sad?” She lowered her gaze for a moment. “Wait a minute. It’s Saturday. Didn’t your mother get married tonight at the fancy-pants Hacienda del Sol?” Picking up the edges of her skirt, she bent her knees in an exaggerated curtsy. A funny, subservient gesture that didn’t match the sorrow on her face.

“Mom tied the knot. In spite of her dipshit son.” He wondered if Charlotte was sad because she hadn’t been invited to the wedding—sad because she and Finn’s mother were no longer friends.

He waited until her gaze met his. “Is Amron around?”

For a moment, she didn’t respond. “Amron and Jennifer are dancing the night away. She turns into a pumpkin at midnight. Way I figure, Amron should be rolling in around 12:20.” Finn cuffed his forehead with the heel of his right hand. “The dance. I can’t believe I forgot. Sorry to bother you, Mrs. James.” He turned to leave.

“I know your mother raised you to respect your elders, but I hate that Mrs. James crap.”

Her words stopped him.

She threw her head back and laughed. “Call me Charlotte. And by the way, you look downright gorgeous. Like Tom Cruise, except taller.” Her gaze wandered over his tuxedo, then she lifted her hand, touched the front of his shirt and looked full into his face. “Gorgeous and tense as an Olympic sprinter before the gun goes off. I’m here for you, if you want to talk about it.”

“I need to get going.”

“Looks to me like you need a counsellor.” She handed him her beer and smiled.

“Call me Dr. Phil.”

It felt sort of weird to be drinking out of the same bottle as Charlotte, but that didn’t keep him from swilling what beer remained in one long swallow. When he stepped inside the kitchen, the air smelled like cigarette smoke.

She gently moved him aside so she could close the sliding glass door. “What’s wrong, Finnie?”

Her use of the little boy name his mother used to call him made his eyes water.

He wiped his face with the back of his hand. He was both ashamed and really pissed off about the way he cried so easily. “I’m such a jerk.” His voice sounded ragged. “I can’t believe what I did.” He paused, chased away the look of shock on his mother’s face at the wedding. “I ruined the whole thing.”

“You’ve come to the right place. I’m quite experienced at ruining things.” She smiled at him then, a beautiful smile made with both her eyes and her mouth. It was a smile that came from her heart because she cared about him, and he knew it. A smile reminding him Charlotte had always been an adult he could talk to.

Finn looked down at her cowboy boots and remembered the last time he’d seen

Charlotte and Amron together. They’d been fighting about her drinking and missing work. Amron had run out the back door and into the desert, Finn at his heels.

“Sometimes I hate my life,” Amron said. “Sometimes I wish my mother was friggin’ dead.”

It had surprised Finn, because Charlotte and Amron’s relationship had always amazed him. They were more like best friends than mother and son. They hung out together—at least, they used to before Amron met Jennifer.

Charlotte had always accepted Amron. She never tried to change his internal landscape and make him into something he wasn’t. Not that Amron needed remaking. He’d arrived on the planet with a little bit of everything—one of those rare kids; an honor student and a jock.

With a little help from a black wig Charlotte had slicked back and styled into a duck’s ass, he got the part. Who knew the dude could sing?

“If Amron upset you, he didn’t mean it.”

“It’s not Amron,” she said, a slight tremble in her lower lip.

Finn didn’t know what he’d do if she started to cry. “I should get going.”

Charlotte grabbed his arm and pulled him deeper into the kitchen.

“I don’t want you to be late for work,” he said.

She waitressed at The Rock Pub, a local steak house, and her slender arms were muscular from lifting trays of beer mugs. “I was supposed to work tonight, but don’t know, I just had to get out of there. Gracie is covering for me.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, exposing the gold cross earrings she always wore. “So how about a full bottle this time?”

He shook his head. “We’d better not.”

With a nod, she gestured toward the kitchen table. “What’s this we shit? I intend to have another beer and it looks like you could use one. Maybe a whole case.” She headed to the refrigerator, a barely perceptible weave in her gait, grabbed two bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon and glanced over at him. “You’re almost as tall as your father. And you sound like him, too.”

Finn slipped off his tuxedo jacket, draped it over the back of the chair and took a seat at the kitchen table. He unclipped his bow tie and cummerbund and stuffed them into the jacket pockets.

Charlotte launched one of the beer bottles toward him, then flipped on the overhead fan. She settled, sideways, in the opposite chair. When she talked, her eyes sent out little sparks that made him feel like there was no one else in the world she’d rather be with.

“Now, what’s this about you ruining the wedding?” She eased off the cap of her beer with a bottle opener that played the Arizona fight song. When Amron won a full-ride baseball scholarship, including a stipend to cover books and incidentals, the recruiter had given Charlotte and Amron shirts, hats, and jackets. She never wore any of them, but she sure loved that bottle opener.

The refrigerator hummed steadily. “It is okay, Finn. You can tell me.”

“When Nate and Mom said their vows—tossing around the word ‘forever’ like it actually meant something—I kept thinking about my dad and the vows he and my mother made. And then I thought about Danni and how she broke us up for no good reason.”

He hadn’t meant for it to happen, but every dark aspect of his life had risen up at the wedding, demanding to be heard. There was no forever. Not for his parents. Not for him and Danni. Not for anyone.

Charlotte sighed. “What did you do?”

“I kept hearing that word ‘forever’, and realizing it was meaningless crap. I didn’t know I’d said ‘bullshit’ out loud until I saw the looks on their faces. My mom, who practically begged me to be part of the wedding, slapped me across the face and told me to leave.” His mother had never once hit him before. Stunned, Finn had touched his cheek, felt the burn of her handprint rising. He looked around for an easy way out. Short of climbing over a six-foot stucco wall, there was none. He burst into tears, ran down the centre aisle and outside, through the courtyard toward his car.

The heat of a hundred disbelieving stares had followed him.

There was sadness in Charlotte’s eyes as she reached across the table to cover his hand with her own. Her fingernails were long, newly-manicured bright red, and her hand felt warm on top of his. “I’m sorry. I know what it feels like to put your foot in your mouth.”

Finn said nothing. He wished he had put his foot in his mouth, or at least covered it with his hand to keep that horrible word inside.

“Tell me what happened with Danielle. I thought I’d be dancing at your wedding one of these days.”

He shrugged, hesitated for a moment, figured, what the hell. Charlotte was the least judgmental person he’d ever known. “Her mother found this poem I’d written about how much I liked to touch her bare skin. She freaked out and told Danni to stop seeing me. Said she wouldn’t have some sex-craved wannabe poet ruining her daughter’s life.”

Charlotte removed her hand from his, raised her eyebrows and nodded, a slight smile on her face. “Personally, I have a soft spot for sex-craved poets.” She lifted her beer bottle in a pretend toast.

He studied her wrist, small-boned and frail-looking. “After I screwed up the wedding, I stopped by Danni’s house to talk, and found she’d hooked up with some football player from Foggia High.” He couldn’t believe how easily the words tumbled out of him. Usually when something bothered him, he’d write a poem that helped him understand what he felt. Poems he’d only shared with Danni and Amron.

“We’ve been together four years,” he said. “I didn’t think her mother…I thought we’d always—”

Charlotte patted his hand. “I know exactly where you’re coming from. Loving someone who breaks your heart hurts in ways you didn’t know you could hurt.”

“Who broke your heart?”

“My boyfriend of almost three years dumped me tonight.” She stood, walked over to the refrigerator and grabbed two more beers. When she sat again, she pulled a cigarette from the pack on the table and put it in her mouth, but couldn’t steady her hands enough to light it.

Finn struck a match and held it to the cigarette.

She drew in until it lit, then took a long draw and exhaled, the smoke rising above her in a thin white stream. She fluffed her hair with her fingertips, leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Let’s go in the living room. These oak chairs are hard on the butt, even when you’ve got as much padding as I do.” She patted the side of her slender hip.

In a different frame of mind, he would have given her the compliment she fished for and told her she looked great. But he remained silent. The beer slid, golden and cold, down his throat. He stood, pushed his chair under the table and followed her.

The night had grown cool, as always did in late February, and she stoked the logs in the living room fireplace, flipped on the CD player, and they sat, side-by side, on the sofa. She played love songs from the sixties, all of them slow.

For a while he closed his eyes and slumped back against the faded, red corduroy cushions—listening to the soft music and trying to lose himself.

When he finally opened his eyes, Charlotte fixed him with a thoughtful and considering stare. “Come on. You can’t fool me. Something else is eating at you.”

Remembering those childhood days, he felt a sudden loosening in his chest as if she had reached out and pulled a cord from somewhere deep inside him. “Last week, my father admitted he’d been lying to me. He did have an affair. The real reason my mother moved out.” Finn ranted on about the way he’d defended his dad and chosen to live with him. About how much he’d hurt both his mom and younger sister.

Charlotte listened but said nothing.

When they ran out of PBR, they started drinking bottles of Chardonnay. And by the time he’d finished telling Charlotte everything he needed to tell, he’d lost count of the number of bottles he’d drunk and was crying again.

“If you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can start to love them for who they really are.” She pulled him into her arms and rubbed his back. The wildflower smell of her perfume, as familiar as his own childhood, comforted him. “If you ask me, Finlay Hushton, you’ve got the world by its balls. You got accepted to all those good schools. Danielle’s a fool not to see it.”

Charlotte let him go, slipped into the kitchen, and returned with more beer. She lit the candles on the coffee table.

Before he knew what happened, they were dancing to Photograph, Charlotte’s warm cheek nestled in his neck. He felt the blades of her narrow shoulders, the thin cotton fabric over her breasts.

“You’re a hell of a good dancer.” She threw her head back and laughed. “Much better than the last time.”

He thought about the way she’d taught him and Amron to slow dance, just in time for their sixth grade party. “I owe it all to you.” Finn laughed, too, a high-pitched, fake sound, then bent from the waist in an exaggerated bow. Though it wasn’t even 9pm, he was dizzy from the beer, had never drunk so much before, and his head swirled, temples drumming to the slow and steady beat of the music. The candles seemed to float inside his eyelids like small full moons.

She undid the top two buttons of his shirt, then removed his watch and studied them for a moment, flat silver squares with a raised initial ‘M’ in the centre. “Amrongot the plain ones. Your mother always did have a lot of class,” she said, as she tucked them into his pocket and rolled up his sleeves. She ran her fingertips over hisforearm to the small blue veins in the crook of his elbow. Then she unbuttoned therest of his shirt, slipped it from his shoulders and dropped it onto the chair. It drifted down, draping itself over the arm of the scuffed, leather recliner like the wings of a huge white bird.

As if she pulled him by a string, he stepped forward, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. He tasted the cigarettes and beer on her tongue, mixed with something minty like toothpaste. He dropped his hands to her waist, her body narrowing between his palms, like a slender and graceful vase. Blood pounded in his ears. This was his best friend’s mother.

Stunned by his desire, the thought that he was doing something very wrong flickered for an instant before he pushed all thoughts aside. The scent of her perfume mingled with the beer and his dizziness, and when she took him by the hand and led him back to the sofa, he followed.

*******************************

Detective Matthews William played the song, Love you forever, over and over on his wife’s old upright piano, the way he’d done every night for a solid year. He played until everything inside him collapsed—played until his shoulders slumped and his arms rested on the keyboard. He dropped his throbbing head onto his forearms and closed his eyes. Tonight, he was remembering their first date and the way it felt to hold her in his arms on the wooden dance floor. One dance, one song, and it was as if they’d been dancing together their entire lives.

The telephone rang. His eyes shot open.

The Foggia County Crime Department dispatcher reported paramedics, responding to a 911 report of an injury, had found a dead woman in a bathtub out in Vieste. No sign of forced entry or struggle. Most likely a suicide, but the two deputies at the scene had requested investigative backup.

“Can you go out there?” Lottie asked.

He looked at the photo of Andrea and Kate he’d unpacked an hour ago and set on the piano top between two lit candles. It had been taken under their blue spruce tree, the Christmas before the accident. Andrea had been thirty-two years old and Kate thirteen. “This isn’t a good night for me, Lottie.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “I haven’t forgotten what today is, but none of the other investigators are answering their phones. I’m sure they’ll blame it on the power outage. Its hit half of the county, but right now you’re the only one I can reach. I’m really, really sorry, Williams.”

He sighed, knowing it was the job that had kept him as sane as he was—which wasn’t saying much. “All right, give me the address.” He jotted down the location.

“Should I try to contact Crenshaw?” Lottie asked.

He thought of the Foggia County Medical Examiner with his round body and slightly yellowish skin. They called him Melon behind his back. William was glad he’d earned his nickname because he ran faster than any other runner on the high school track team. He got teased about it occasionally, a little bathroom humour, but at least it wasn’t because he looked like a cantaloupe.

“William? Are you still there?” “Unfortunately,” he said.

“What about Crenshaw?” “Melon is a pain in the ass and thinks every dead body is his own personal property. I’ll phone him after I check things out.”

“You know the policy,” Lottie said. “And you know how he gets.”

“He’ll be pissed. So what’s new? I’d rather have Officer O’Donnell out there first, if you can get a hold of him.”

William had worked a murder case with Tim O’Donnell over a year ago, and found him to be a damn good investigator.

“I’ll do what I can,” Lottie said. “And, William, I wish I could say something that would—”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks, Lottie.”

He glanced at the photo again, blew out the candles and hung up the telephone. He slipped on his favourite bolo. It had a large turquoise slide attached to a blackleather band, with tooled silver tips on both ends. He grabbed his western-cut jacket.

Though he’d never told anyone, he dressed in western garb for his son, for the boywho’d wanted to be a rodeo cowboy. He touched the silver belt buckle that had been Kate’s most prized possession. Just weeks before he died, Kate took first place in the junior calf-roping event at the annual youth rodeo in FLaurence.

He grabbed the steel grey Stetson Andrea had given him that Christmas, four months before the car accident. He measured everything that way now. One week after the accident he’d packed away their photographs because he couldn’t do anything but look at them. Five months after the accident he’d sold their house and moved into an apartment. Seven months from the day of their funeral, Kate would have turned fourteen. William supposed he was destined to measure time that way; first the days, then the weeks and the months. And finally, one year after another.

He sighed, picked up the camera bag where he kept his 35mm Canon, slung the strap over his shoulder, locked his studio apartment and headed for the parking lot.

The late night air was cool, the sky dotted with stars and a moon hanging white and full.

Ten minutes later, he arrived at the scene. The house sat on a dirt cul-de-sac, with a scattering of others, a few miles north of Vieste State Park. It was lit up like one of those porcelain shops in the Christmas village Andrea had set up each year—every window glowing with yellow light. No power outage here.

An ambulance from Vieste Search and Rescue blocked the driveway, its dome light swirling, casting red and blue shadows on the white landscaping stones on either side of the walkway. Inside the ambulance cab, a paramedic he didn’t recognize talked into a radio.

William parked his Ford Bronco on the street behind the patrol car, grabbed his camera and headed toward the house, just as two deputies stepped into the yard. They wore the Foggia County Department’s brown pants and brown short-sleeved shirt with its gold and blue deputy patch. Hastings and Mudrow introduced themselves.

Hastings updated William on what they’d found upon arrival, stated they’d determined the victim was deceased, done a security sweep, and secured the scene by taping off the bathroom entrance. “We saw nothing to indicate anyone had broken into the house. No sign of any struggle. Nothing much out of place. But there’s a straight-edged razorblade beside the body. I’ve never seen anyone use one on their neck before, but I guess it’s possible,” Mudrow said.

“Who called 911?”

“A woman. But she didn’t leave her name. The front door was unlocked. No one around when we got here. So, we called for backup.”

William nodded his approval. He preferred a uniform make his mistakes on the side of being too cautious, even if it did mean a middle of the night trip to Vieste. “I’ll take it from here.” He made a mental note to have the phone call traced.

William snapped a few photos of the outside of the house in relationship to its neighbours, overviews for the big picture, then headed inside. His process was to inch through the house, open drawers and closets, learn what he could and get a feel for the victim’s life, before focusing on the actual scene of death. It looked like a rental house; white walls, dark but neutral carpet, and those cheap plastic window blinds they sell at K-mart. It had only one bathroom that opened into the hallway between its two bedrooms.

“She’s in the bathroom. Down the hall, second door on the right,” a clean-shaven paramedic said. “I left the shower curtain open. Better prepare yourself. It’s notpretty.”

“Was it closed when you got here?”

The paramedic nodded.

William put on a pair of latex gloves and shoe covers, then walked down the hallway, paying attention to the walls and carpet. He took a quick look in the bathroom without disturbing the yellow crime scene tape. He’d investigated some gruesome scenes, but this one hit him hard. The bathroom smelled like excrement and lavender bubble bath. The victim was small with blonde curly hair that looked as if it had been hacked off with hedge clippers. Charlotte was lying dead in bathtub.

When he stepped back into the living room, the paramedic was stuffing a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff into the bag that held his gear. He closed the zipper. “We just got another call down in Oro Valley. Sounds like gallstones.”

William told him to go ahead, O’Donnell was on his way and when they were finished, they’d call the Medical Examiner to transport the body. “You figure she lives alone?”

“She’s got a kid,” the paramedic said, his voice tight. “From the looks of the other bedroom, a boy who’s smart and good at sports.” He wheeled around and headed out the front door.

William stood at the living room window for a moment, thinking about thevictim’s son. Had his own son lived, he would be entering high school this fall.

As the paramedic backed the ambulance out of the driveway, a white Ford Escort screeched to a halt on the road in front of the house. The driver’s door opened and a tall, lanky boy wearing a white dinner jacket dodged the ambulance and raced across the landscaping stones to the front walk. His hard-soled shoes clicked against the paved walkway like manic drumsticks.

The front door was flung open. The boy ran into the room. He had blond curly hair and pale skin with a scattering of blemishes spread across his forehead like freckles. “What’s going on?” There was more than a trace of fear in his voice. “Has something happened to my mother?”

William’s blood turned to ice water in his veins. How does a kid recover from something like this? He removed a leather case from the inside pocket of his jacket,flipped it open and flashed his badge. “I’m Detective Matthew William from the Foggia County Crime Department.” He slipped the case back into his pocket andtook out a small black notebook with a ballpoint pen clipped to the cover. “What’syour name, son?”

“Amron James. I live here with my mother. Was she in that ambulance?”

“No,” William said, jotting down the boy’s name and the time he’d arrived on the scene, realizing he’d probably given the poor kid a seed of hope his mother wasn’t hurt badly enough for an ambulance.

“I need you to wait outside until my partner arrives and we finish up in here.”

“Finish up what?” Amron ran into the kitchen, as if looking for his mother, then returned a second later and tried to push past William and into the hallway.

William grabbed Amron from behind and pinned his arms to his sides. “You need to stay out of there.” William knew the house had been compromised by the paramedics, but intended to treat the bathroom like a crime scene until he’d had time to investigate. He led Amron back into the kitchen.

“How bad is it?” Amron asked.

“I’m sorry, son. But it’s about as bad as it gets.” William saw something passover Amron’s face that told him he knew the truth, but wasn’t ready to face it yet. He’d give the boy some time—let him ask questions for which he already knew theanswers.

“Why did the ambulance leave? If she’s hurt so bad, why aren’t you taking her to the hospital?” Amron’s pulse thumped in and out of his neck like a frog’s throat. The ceiling light threw a dark shadow across his face. “Where is she? Where’s my mom?”

William gently pushed Amron into a chair at the kitchen table. For a moment Amron sat, unmoving, his mouth open like a fighter who’d just taken a wicked blow to his head. And then he asked the question his blue eyes had been holding. “Is my mother dead?” His gaze lingered on William. Amron’s eyes were bloodshot and full of pain, but William could see them reaching for a negative answer.

“No,” Amron said. “She can’t be dead.”

Dead. The word echoed back at William, separate and hard as a stone.

With no warning, Amron leaped from his chair and grabbed William by the shoulders. “What happened to her?”

“We don’t know yet,” William said, though he was about ninety-five percent sure she’d been murdered. “The first officers on the scene thought it presented like a suicide.”

The boy’s eyes grew wide and uncomprehending. “She wouldn’t do that.

Please,” he said, his hands tightening on William’s shoulders. “Can’t you just tell me where she is?”

“Come outside with me.” Amron didn’t budge. “Why can’t I see my mom?”

“I know I can’t say anything to dissuade you,” he said. “But until we’re certain a crime didn’t happen here, we have to protect the scene.”

“I’m not going to do anything to your scene. I just want to see my mom.”

The kid’s eyes held so much pain William had to look away. Knowing he’d behave the same way in Amron’s position, William kept his voice calm. “It’s procedure. You understand that, don’t you, Amron?”

Amron reseated himself at the kitchen table. “Yes, sir,” he said, and dropped both arms onto the tabletop, rested his head on his folded hands and closed his eyes. William watched him from the doorway for a moment, then walked into the living room to look out the window for O’Donnell.

When he heard the sound of a chair falling over in the kitchen, William turned back, just as Amron raced down the hallway. Shit. He should have seen that coming. Before he could stop him, Amron burst through the crime scene tape. One long yellow ribbon dangled against the doorframe when William caught up. Amron stepped into the bathroom and froze. William grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him around. Amron had a wide panicked look in his eyes. His skin, even more pale than before, mottled with colour as bright as welts. A tear dropped from the corner of his right eye and ran the length of his cheek, dropping straight and fast, like sweat on a summer glass. Jesus Christ. Maybe he should have kept those two deputies on the scene. What the hell was taking O’Donnell so long?

He pulled Amron into the hallway and wrapped his arms around him. As he held tight to the sobbing boy, William stroked his back, real gentle, the way he’d want his own son treated.

A siren pealed in the distance. Thank God.

Amron pulled away and reeled down the hallway toward the kitchen. William replaced the tape over the bathroom entrance. The siren grew closer. A loud thumping sound came from the kitchen. William hurried toward it. Amron stood in front of the refrigerator, leaning into it with both hands as if hewere holding it up. Between his two palms, an indented spot marred the smooth, avocado-green surface where he’d smashed it with his head so hard the force of it rattled the stack of trays and cookie sheets stored on top. When he turned to face William, Amron’s forehead dripped blood.

For one long moment, William stared at the boy, understanding exactly why he’d done it. Anger came first. Then grief rolled in and settled over you like a thick and unrelenting fog. He pulled Amron away from the refrigerator, shoved him into a chair, then grabbed a dishtowel from the drawer, wet it under the faucet and pressed it against the boy’s head. The cut was in the hairline. “Her hair,” Amron said. “Why would someone cut off her hair like that?”