Destruction: The December People, Book One (35 page)

Samantha handed him a business card. This one had a more familiar Texas DFPS logo.

“They said to give that to you,” she said.

“Are you okay?”

She shrugged weakly.

“Everything will be okay,” he said. “We’ll find your parents. We’ll figure something out. I promise.”

She shook her head. Her chest moved up and down. If she cried, the rain disguised her tears.

“Let’s go inside,” David said.

Samantha followed him back onto the covered porch. Patrick and Emmy hovered close to her but stayed at arm’s length. Jude’s assault had caused her to grow a force field they couldn’t penetrate.

“David,” Samantha whispered.

“Yes?”

She pulled the envelope out from under her shirt.

“They said their job is to find homes for
orphaned
children. Does that mean my parents are dead?”

Emmy let out a tiny gasp.

“They didn’t say?” David asked.

“No. They just said it all matter-of-fact and didn’t explain.”

“Assholes,” Patrick whispered.

Samantha hadn’t taken her eyes off the damp envelope. It had her name written on it in purple ink.

“This is my mom’s handwriting,” she said. “I’m afraid to look inside.”

She handed it to David.

“Do you want me to open it?” he asked.

She nodded.

David didn’t want to look inside, either. The envelope came apart easily, since the glue had come undone in the rain. The purple handwriting was messy and smudged, but readable.

Dance then, wherever you may be.

Mom

“What does it say?” Samantha asked.

“‘Dance then, wherever you may be’,” David said.

“That’s it?” Patrick asked.

“That’s the chorus to the Lord of the Dance,” Emmy said. “The hymn we sing at Easter.”

David handed the paper to Samantha. “Does it mean anything to you?”

“I think it’s a suicide note,” she said.

“No,” David said. “I mean, that’s quite a leap just from that.”

“She didn’t make a lot of sense in the end,” Samantha said.

She buried her face in her hands. Patrick touched Samantha’s shoulder lightly, then he put his arms around her and she buried her face in his chest. Emmy moved in and joined the hug, resting her cheek on Samantha’s shoulder.

“Not today. How could this happen today?” Amanda shouted it, as if she expected an answer, as if she thought she could call God’s secretary and complain about the scheduling mix-up. She threw her purse onto the kitchen counter. “I thought this would happen eventually. I hoped it wouldn’t, but I feared it would. I… but how could it have happened today? If they had only come to collect her two days ago.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered because they didn’t collect her at all,” David said.

Amanda put her face in her hands.

“I’m not convinced they’re dead,” David said. “‘Dance then, wherever you may be’? How is that a suicide note?”

“Why else would they have come for her?”

“Maybe because of what happened. Perhaps, they just know when something bad happens. Can summer wizards do that?”

“I know less about summer wizards than I do about those neon fish that live at the bottom of the ocean. I’ve never even talked to a summer wizard. Although, I’ve seen them, of course. They’re hard to miss.”

David ran his fingers over her hair to smooth down the frizz, but he only made it worse.

“Has he called you?” She whispered it, as if their oldest son’s existence had already become a secret.

“No.”

“We screwed this up. If we call the police now, it will look like we tried to cover it up. There would be no evidence. It’s just the last thing I was thinking of.”

“I know.”

“What do we do?”

Kill Whitman Colter
, David thought to himself. He couldn’t say why that answer came to him. He felt furious and sad and likely turning funny in the head, but he just wanted to do
something
. If he had been a man and had killed Colter right away, none of this would have ever happened. He believed it, even though it made no sense at all.

“I think I’m going to go look for him,” David said. “For Jude.”

He didn’t want to lie anymore, but he had to make an exception. If he told her what he planned to do, she would chain him down and not let him do it, or chain him down so she could do it herself.

David turned to go up the stairs.

“You mean right now?” Amanda asked.

“Right now.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“You know you can’t. Someone has to stay with the kids. And um… lock the doors and keep the gun handy.”

“I always do. But why are you reminding me?”

“Paranoid, I guess. The bad things seem to come all at once.”

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“No. Of course not.”

“I know. I just… there is something about you right now. Like, something changed.”

“You’re imagining things.”

avid stared at his office. Something was wrong with the image in front of him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Then it hit him. He had left the envelope with Colter’s address right on top of his desk, but he didn’t see it now. Maybe he did move it. He certainly should have moved it. But so much had happened so fast. His pulse quickened.

He scattered the papers on his desk and looked under his keyboard. He got on his hands and knees and scoured the floor. By the time he started looking through his drawers, he had become frantic. He looked in ridiculous places, such as in the folder with his 2008 tax return documents and under the sheets of his bed. He ripped through the closet and looked in pockets of jackets he hadn’t even worn this season. Close to ripping apart his desk with an axe, he noticed something that didn’t belong.

A pink Post-it note peeked out from under some of the papers he had tossed around. He didn’t use pink Post-it notes. He recognized Emmy’s giant, loopy handwriting.

I have left to kill Whitman Colter. Emmy

The words blurred, and he blinked a few times to bring them back into focus. It made no sense.

“Emmy!” he shouted.

He ran to her room and threw open the door. “Emmy!” he yelled again, even though he knew he wouldn’t find her.

He turned around and saw Xavier and Evangeline watching him.

“She went to a friend’s house,” Evangeline said. “Remember? I heard her telling you.”

David’s hands shook so much that he had to grip the phone tightly to keep from dropping it as he dialed Emmy’s number. It went straight to voicemail.

Amanda came in the room. “What’s going on?”

“Emmy!” David shouted again. His vocabulary had been reduced to a single word.

“Emmy what?” Amanda asked. Amanda glanced at Evangeline. “What do you have there?”

David’s heart lurched into his ribs. Evangeline held a pink Post-it note. He must not have noticed her take it out of his hands. Xavier leaned in and read it over her shoulder. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t even move.

Amanda snatched the note. At first, she had the same frozen expression. Then she said, “I don’t understand what this means. David?”

“I can only assume it means what it says,” David replied.

“You told me he was dead.” She whispered it as if she didn’t want the kids to hear, even though they stood right next to her and had read the note themselves. Evangeline and Xavier animated enough to look at him, waiting for an explanation.

Patrick and Samantha entered the upstairs family room too. Samantha didn’t look as if she had been crying, but she had a manic vibration about her, as if it all simmered under her skin.

“What happened?” Patrick asked. The tiredness in his voice belonged to a much older man.

David took the note from Amanda’s hands and gave it to Samantha. “Did she say anything to you?”

Samantha stared at the note with a numb expression. She nodded.

“What?” The girl had been raped and orphaned in the course of twenty-four hours, and he still wanted to shake the answer out of her.

“She listened to your conversation with that woman. She had her ear against the door. She was worried the woman was your lover or something and wanted to find out for sure. She told me what the woman said, that their stepfather is still alive, and that you were supposed to kill him.”

“What?” Amanda interjected.

Samantha paused for a moment, then continued, “But she never said she was going to do it herself. She didn’t tell me that. I… I had no idea.”

“Damn you, David,” Amanda said. “You’re still keeping secrets from me. Why didn’t you tell me the man was alive?”

“I’m not going to waste time fighting with you. I have to find her. Now.”

“You’re right,” Amanda said.

She retreated into the bedroom without a word, but David knew what she had in mind. She would get the one thing that made her feel safe.

She returned with an empty lock box. “She already took it.” Her hands trembled, and she dropped the box on the floor with a loud clang. “Where is he? Where is she going?”

David opened his mouth as if he expected the answer to come out. Then the truth hit him. “I never even opened the envelope,” he said. “I can call the woman who gave it to me.”

He ran down the stairs while he dialed. He moved so quickly he missed a step and had to catch himself from tumbling down the stairs. There would be no more discussion. He would go find her right now.

Rachel’s cell went straight to a monotone male recording: “The person you are trying to reach is unavailable now. Please try again later.”

He didn’t even have the option to leave a message.

“Shit,” he said. He would keep calling every thirty seconds if he had to.

He grabbed his jacket and his keys.

“Wait,” Amanda said. “Take one of the hunting rifles. I’ll get one from the garage.”

“I can’t walk around with a hunting rifle.”

“How else are you supposed to kill him?”

David had no response to this. She asked it so matter-of-factly, as if she wanted him to take an umbrella for the rain, not a gun to kill a man.

When Amanda disappeared to her garage locker, an odd moment of silence passed. His three remaining children and Samantha had followed them down the stairs and stared at him. He had Emmy’s face in his tunnel vision and had forgotten this impacted all of them. They all heard him and Amanda talk about killing a man, and not just any man. He couldn’t think of a thing to say.