The Fourth Child, Jessica Winter [fantasy novels to read txt] 📗

to Stitch, and any greater proximity to himwould have smothered her.

When she was off the phone with Mom, she planned to walk over to the computer cluster at Connecticut Hall. She wouldn’t haveto wait for a free computer this early on a Sunday morning.

“They were always such nice boys. A nice family,” Mom said.

No subject heading, Lauren decided. I’m so sorry, Stitch. My heart is breaking for you and your mother and brothers.

“Mom,” Lauren said, “you don’t know anyone from before—from the protests—who could have done something like this, do you?”A ridiculous thought zoomed past, that Mom’s phone was tapped by investigators.

“No,” Mom said. “I mean, so far as I remember. It’s been six years.”

“Six and a half.”

“There were people during the protests who liked to think they could be capable of it,” Mom said. “I just wonder if all thatdrama stirred something up that wasn’t there before. Planted a seed of some kind.”

“It wasn’t anything, Mom. It was just a circus.”

“There is blood on all of their hands. Mine, too.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“We told ourselves that words were actions, like prayer,” Mom said. “You dehumanize someone, you call them a monster—thenlook what happens.”

“Do you want somebody to forgive you,” Lauren said dully. It wasn’t a question.

“I feel a responsibility,” Mom said.

“You always want to feel responsible for everything,” Lauren said.

“And that’s so bad?”

“It’s like—you want to feel guilty about it, like you’re being selfless, but you’re not, you’re just making it all about you.”

“You want making it all about you, talk to Margie Dale,” Mom said. “Margie Dale was out power-walking with Ellie D’Amato onFriday night, and she’s swearing up and down to anyone who will listen that she heard the shot, she heard the shot. She callsme up: ‘Jane, I heard the shot.’ Who cares?”

“She heard the shot—like it’s a trophy. Her souvenir of death.”

The shot had come from just behind the Rosens’ weeping willow.

“‘I heard the shot,’” Mom scoffed. “What are you, the FBI? Stick it up your ass.”

Lauren closed her eyes. The phone hot and slick against her cheek.

“Such a nice man,” Mom was saying. “Such a shame.”

She was standing behind the sniper, gazing over his shoulder at Stitch’s dad in the window.

“He was a nice man, Mom,” Lauren affirmed. “He was good to me. Kind and gentle.”

She caught the sniper off guard, buckled his knees. She peeled the rifle off his person with liturgical solemnity, a ceremonyin reverse. The same grass breathed her feet off the ground. The same darkness was milky and changeable, like you could moveyour finger through the air and write a useless story, a story that never even happened.

 

The shiva was at Stitch’s uncle’s place, somewhere in Tonawanda, because Stitch’s house was still an active crime scene. PJ and Sean picked Lauren up from the airport in the dragon wagon, PJ’s Gumby-long limbs pressing his knees against the wheel, Sean in the passenger seat covered in a road map, his head likewise brushing the roof. The surge of androgens in their midteens had yanked them both skyward with a whiplash force that left them absurdly tall but also mellowed and frequently drowsy, especially in the mornings; PJ had scheduled all his fall-semester classes at UB for the afternoon.

Lauren climbed into the back seat, overnight bag at her feet. Her brothers twisted awkwardly around in their places to kissher hello without breaking the stream of their quarrel.

“You can’t bring two-buck chuck to a memorial service,” PJ was saying as he pulled away from Arrivals.

“It’s what was in the pantry!” Sean said. “There’s no accounting for Mom and Dad’s taste!”

“You might as well show up with a sack of potatoes and make some rotgut in the backyard,” PJ said. “Bring a personal touchto it.”

“Wait,” Sean said, “is it even okay to bring wine to a shiva?”

“Food is better. Mom and Dad aren’t coming?” She pulled herself to the edge of the back seat, propping up her elbows on eitherof her brothers’ headrests.

“Mom said something about ‘out of respect for the family,’” Sean said, dropping the map to make air quotes with his fingers.

“Listen, when I want to respect a grieving family I boycott their funerals—” PJ said.

“It’s not a boycott,” Sean said. “It’s more like she’s covering her eyes with her hands and hoping that means nobody sees her.”

“—and I don’t send a card, either,” PJ said. “And I bring moonshine in mason jars.”

“Mom will send a card,” Sean said, “but she’ll leave it blank because she wouldn’t want to be presumptuous.”

“I mean, I get it,” PJ said, sounding unconvinced. “Mom thinks that her whole history with the—you know—”

“A moral residue,” Sean said, like he was picking the words out of his teeth. Lauren recognized the phrase as a favorite of Mrs. Bristol’s.Sean had her for English now, in his senior year of high school.

“Mom just doesn’t want to cause any trouble—” PJ was saying, his voice strained at one end by sympathy and the other by sarcasm.

“It’s not like anyone would turn her away, or even know who she was,” Lauren said. “What, because she went on a march sixyears ago?”

“I mean, we don’t know—there could be people there who would be uncomfortable,” PJ said.

“Nah,” Lauren said. “She’s just using that as an excuse not to go. But what about Dad?”

Sean laughed. “Nana Dee could drop dead at morning doubles tomorrow and Dad would decide to replace the rain gutters beforehe showed up at her wake.”

“That’s mean,” Lauren said.

“That is mean,” PJ said. “He wouldn’t replace the rain gutters. He would build a little shed in the backyard to grieve in. Table forone.”

“Dad’s always been a troubled loner, but Mom should know better,” Lauren said.

“She should show up.”

“Well, she’s got Mirela to think about, too,” PJ said. He had momentarily exhausted his resources for ragging on their mother.

“Mirela can handle a shiva,” Lauren said.

Sean puffed out his lips in a daunted way. “Sure she can.”

“Mom shouldn’t hide behind a little kid,” Lauren said. She disliked the hectoring tone in her voice and