by D C Grant
Jason?” Gran asks me as she comes into the room. The captain is just behind her. They must have seen me jump back.
“I think he moved, but I’m not sure.” I shake my head. “No, he couldn’t have, he’s not moving now.”
“I believe it’s small movements that start first,” the captain says. “Then a few days later, they wake up. It’s a good sign.”
I look at my father, willing him to move again, but he’s as still as before.
“Well, I must be getting along,” the captain says, and he leaves the room. Once he’s gone I realize that I’d not had a chance to talk to him but now I’ve lost my motivation. The tiny hope that flickered and died again has left me feeling despondent.
It feels like ages before Mrs Rosenberg comes to pick me up, and Gran comes down with me as if I’m a child who can’t be let out of her sight. Once I get into the car, she goes back into the hospital to spend more time with Dad. We drive in silence to Ben’s house where, in the privacy of his bedroom, I tell him about what happened at the airport.
“So he got into Mike’s car? Are you sure?”
“Yes, positive, I saw him. I don’t know what he’s up to, if anything at all. I mean, there’s no law that says you can’t pick someone up from the airport.”
“Maybe we need to tell someone.”
“But what have we got? A list of flight times?” He doesn’t answer me. “Besides, what if they decide that it’s something to do with the drugs they found in my house, and they think Dad is involved? I mean, Mike and Dad were buddies. I don’t know enough yet and I don’t want to tell anyone until I’m sure that it’s going to prove that Dad isn’t on the take.”
“Fair enough,” Ben says.
“And anyway, I’m sure he’s going to wake up soon and tell me himself. I felt his hand move this afternoon when I was with him.”
“That’s great! He’ll come right, just you see, then he’ll tell us everything.”
I smile at him. “You know, Ben, I don’t want to wait, I want to know now and I just wish that I could find out a way to do it. I’m sure there’s something in our house – evidence that hasn’t been found yet, something that would explain it all. But I just don’t know where!”
I flop down on my bed, frustrated, and reach for my book, but of course it’s not there. Clues, clues, clues are all over the place and I can’t put them together. It feels like there is something missing, something I’ve overlooked, but, as much as I rack my brain until it hurts, I just can’t think what it is.
A Million Dollars
I sit at my desk at school the next day, but my mind is not on the work before me. I doodle instead and yawn. It’s the last period before school ends for the day. I can’t wait to leave as schoolwork seems so unimportant now. Luckily the teachers have eased off on me in sympathy, for the time being, anyway.
I keep thinking of my parents, while Ben tries to help me, but I can’t retain any information. The teacher sees my frustration and tells me not to be annoyed with myself, but at the moment it all seems too much. I sigh and draw a circle around the words I have written on the refill:
Speed
Hotel
Flight times
Chan and Sandman
Break in – looking for what?
What does Dad know?
The bell echoes down the hallway and I drop my pen onto the pad, relieved. I lift up my school bag and my front door key falls out of the front pocket.
“Race you home,” Ben says as he slings his backpack over his shoulder.
“Home,” I repeat as I pick up the key. “Hey, Ben, let’s stop at my house on the way home.”
“We’re not allowed.”
“I don’t care – it’s my house and I want to go. You with me?”
“Sure,” he says.
My breathing quickens as we walk toward my house. I’m nervous and excited all at the same time; I’m certain the answer to all my questions is in the house; I just have to find it, whatever “it” is.
The house is cold and silent as we let ourselves in. I peer around, expecting someone to jump out at me, but the house is quiet. I stand in the hallway, remembering my life before the car accident. At this time Mum would be home from her part-time job and the memory is so strong that I have to resist the urge to call out to her as I move toward the kitchen. Ben follows me and says nothing.
We leave our bags in the hallway and make our way up the stairs. I’m drawn toward my parents’ bedroom as if the answers are in there. It looks much the same as before: untidy, the clothes on the floor, a path cleared to allow access around the bed and to the en-suite. I stumble forward and sit down heavily on the bed while Ben stays in the doorway. I feel tears well up in my eyes and roll down my cheeks. I can’t stop them.
“She looked so beautiful,” I whisper.
“Your mother?” Ben asks softly.
I nod, feeling a salty tear drop off the end of my nose. I look toward the en-suite.
“I sat here,” I say, “while Dad got ready and Mum put her makeup on in the bathroom. Dad had this smile on his face, he looked so happy and Mum called out to me from bathroom and asked me how she looked. I said she looked … she looked … like a million dollars.”
To hide my tears, I look down at the carpet, at the spot where my father had stood while adjusting his tie.
He was smiling, which I couldn’t understand as he had done nothing but moan about the fancy dinner party to which they’d been invited, a twentieth wedding anniversary.
“Why are you smiling?” I asked Dad. “I thought you didn’t want to go to this dinner party.”
“Hush, don’t say it so loud,” he said, glancing over to Mum, but she was humming to herself and hadn’t heard. “It’s got nothing to do with the dinner party.” He winked at me.
I understood. “When you smile like that, it’s because you’ve solved one of your cases, am I right?”
He cocked his head on one side. “Yes, I have the evidence at my feet.”
I thought at the time that it was a strange remark to make, but then Mum came out of the bathroom and swept her handbag off the bed. I didn’t have another chance to ask him what he meant.
I wipe the end of my nose with the back of my hand and sniff. I feel Ben go past me and then his hand appears with a wad of toilet paper.
“Thanks,” I say as I take it from him and blow my nose, but the paper shreds and ends up on the floor in small bits, like snow. I lean forward to sweep them up but they’re too small and they stick to the carpet. My hand passes over the tuft of carpet I noticed the last time I was in the room – where two sections of carpet join, snagged when the intruder – Chan – pulled his roundhouse kick
I feel Ben sit down on the bed next to me and he stays there while I bawl my eyes out, knowing that he only needs to be there, not say or do anything. Except maybe get more toilet paper for me, which he does when the wad in my hand disintegrates completely.
When the tears subside, he gets up and walks to the door.
“Time to go home, to my home,” he says. “Mum will be wondering where we are, and she’ll have baked something too. It’ll cheer you up.”
I look up at him and smile. I feel refreshed somehow, as though the tears have cleared the heaviness of my heart.
I get up from the bed and look toward the bathroom where Mum had stood the night she hadn’t come back.
“Goodbye, Mum” I whisper. “I’ll miss you.”
We leave the depressing house in silence.
Hole in the Floor
I can’t sleep. I toss and turn, unable to settle. The room’s too hot, and when I push back the covers it’s too cold. Ben snores on the other bed, deep asleep. I want to wake him up, talk to him, go over all the things we have discovered, but I can’t. I know that once Ben’s asleep, he’s really asleep and it takes a nuclear bomb to wake him up. I leave him alone while the questions tumble over and over in my mind.
I keep going back to what my father said: “I’ve got the evide
nce at my feet.”
Why not, “I’ve got the evidence in hand,” or something like that? He was pleased with himself. He had an answer to something, when the last bits were falling into place. I’d seen it before and I’d know that soon he’d be able to tell me what he’d been working on, but not yet, not just yet.
But maybe what he knew got my mother killed. He got too close. Was Mike involved? I couldn’t believe that, they’d been good friends since Mike had joined the precinct. Should I tell the captain or the chief what Ben and I had found? Or would we just be in more trouble?
I’m getting nowhere.
With a heavy sigh, I throw back the covers again and sit up. It’s the middle of the night, the house is quiet but I have to get up and do something to stop my mind working overtime. I start to get dressed. I want to go back to my house, have another look at my parents’ bedroom, try to find out what my father looked so pleased about.
I dress in jeans, T-shirt, sweatshirt and jacket, lacing on my boots because it will be cold and wet outside. I wonder what I’m thinking – going out in the middle of the night in the middle of winter, but now that I’m up I’m determined to do it. I decide not to go out the front door in case Ben’s parents hear it open and close. I grab my door key and a flashlight from Ben’s bookshelf, open the window and climb onto the window sill. Unlike my house, Ben’s house is on one level so it’s not far to the ground when I jump out. Ben doesn’t stir, not even when I misjudge the landing and fall hard on the grass, my feet crunching on the frost. I stand beside the house for a while, expecting a light to go on,
