Tell

by Norah McClintock

  Chapter Eleven

  When my mother came back into the room, her eyes were pink and swollen. She had been crying. But her lipstick and mascara looked just fine, so I figured she must have done a repair job in the bathroom. The little gold-framed picture of Jamie still sat in the middle of the table. My mother seemed startled to see it there. Maybe she thought it should have been taken away as evidence.

  “Please sit down, M rs. Benson,” Detective Antonelli said.

  She sat down next to me, but didn’t look at me. She didn’t ask me how I was either.

  Detective Antonelli said, “Mrs. Benson, do you think that what happened to your husband had anything at all to do with your son’s death?”

  My mother looked even more startled.

  “I don’t see how,” she said. “Jamie’s death was an accident.” Her hand went to her hair, and she started to fiddle with the ends of it.

  Detective Antonelli looked at her for a few moments. Then he glanced at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. But cops are supposed to be good at that. They’re supposed to be good at not revealing things. I wondered if they were also good poker players.

  “Do you think that you’d like to contact David’s father?” he said. “His real father, I mean?”

  “David’s real father is dead,” my mother said. She continued to fiddle with her hair.“He died in a car accident when David was barely two years old.”

  “What about Jamie’s father?” Detective Antonelli said.

  My mother glanced at me. She was twirling hair around one of her fingers now. I wondered if she even knew she was doing it.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “David has something to say,” Detective Antonelli said.

  My mother turned her head slowly to look at me. Her eyes were wide and scared-looking. “So it’s true,” she said. “You did have something to do with it. What did you do, David? Why did you do it? You have to tell.”

  So I did.

  I didn’t look at Detective Antonelli when I told. I looked at my mother. And I didn’t talk about Phil, not directly anyway. I talked about Jamie. I told her about the day he drowned.

  “Phil was irritated with him, remember?” I said.

  “Why are you talking about this?” my mother said. “I don’t want to think about that. It was a horrible accident.”

  “Phil was pissed off and you said maybe, if he took Jamie out in the boat, it would be good for both of them. You didn’t want me to go. You said it was just Jamie and Phil. And I got mad. Remember?”

  My mother looked at Detective Antonelli.

  “I remember,” she said. “But—”

  “Phil paddled the boat out to where the water was deep and then he tried to start it. Jamie didn’t have his life jacket on. Phil told you that later. Remember?”

  My mother’s face was pale. She nodded.

  “You were sleeping on the dock, remember? And Jamie was acting crazy in the boat. Phil yelled at him. He told him if he wasn’t careful, he was going to fall in the water. Remember?”

  “I was asleep, David. I didn’t hear that.” She looked at me closely. “And you weren’t even there. You were up in the cottage. You didn’t come down until after.”

  What she meant was I didn’t come down until she screamed. But she was wrong.

  “When I got mad because you wouldn’t let me go in the boat with Phil and Jamie, you told me to go up to the cottage. You said to have a time-out in my room. But I didn’t. Instead I snuck back down and hid under the canoe on the beach. Remember that canoe, Mom? It was upside down on the sand?”

  Her face turned even paler.

  “I saw them. Phil warned Jamie. Jamie was standing up in the boat without his life jacket on. Phil started the boat and it lurched. Jamie fell overboard. He was splashing around. He yelled. You remember him yelling, don’t you?”

  I knew she did because Jamie’s yell had woken her up. She’d sat up and put her hands over her eyes to block the sun. As soon as she saw that Jamie was in the water, she ran to the end of the dock and started screaming.

  “Phil was just sitting there, remember? He was sitting in the boat like he was frozen and you screamed at him to help Jamie. But he didn’t move. Remember?”

  “I can’t swim,” my mother said quietly to Detective Antonelli. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  “And I ran into the water,” I said. “Remember? I tried to swim to Jamie, but by the time I got there, he wasn’t there anymore.” By the time I got to him, he was underwater. “I dove to get him. I heard you screaming again.”

  “I thought you were going to drown too,” she said.

  “And then Phil jumped into the water. He pulled me up and then he went down for Jamie. Remember? And he was down there a long time.” Maybe he was down there as long as he was because it took that long to find Jamie. Or maybe he was down there so long because he just wanted to make it look like he was trying. “And by the time he brought Jamie up—”

  “Stop!” my mother said. “Stop. Why are you talking about this? What does this have to do with what happened to Phil?”

  “Jamie wasn’t breathing,” I said. “Phil dragged him to the shore and got out of the water. He was just standing there with Jamie in his arms. Do you remember what he said, Mom?”

  I did. I remembered perfectly. I’d seen it in my dreams a thousand times or more. “He said that he was so stunned by what happened that he just froze out there in the boat. That’s why he didn’t jump in the water right away. He said he just froze. Remember?” I remembered. He licked his lips a couple of times and his face changed and he said, I froze. “And I made him put Jamie down and I tried to do mouth-to-mouth on him.” I had learned a little of that from my swimming lessons. “Phil said it was too late. And you started to cry. Phil finally called 911. And when they came, there was nothing they could do because Jamie had drowned.”

  “It was an accident,” my mother said. She kept touching her hair. I’d seen that before too. She did it when she talked about my real father. She did it when she talked about Jamie. And she did it that day on the dock when she told me, “It was an accident, David. It was a terrible accident. We have to be strong. It was terrible what happened to Jamie, but we have to think about Phil too. About how he must feel.” She said, “No matter what anyone might say or do, nothing can bring Jamie back to us.” She said, “We can’t blame Phil for what happened. People react in funny ways.” She said, “David, I don’t know what we would do without Phil.”

  “It was an accident that Jamie fell into the water,” I said to her. “But it wasn’t an accident he drowned, was it, Mom?”

  My mother was crying. Crying and fiddling with her hair. “Why are you saying this?” she said. “Why are you talking about this? It was an accident.”

  “Phil could have saved him,” I said. “Phil was right there. He was a good swimmer. He could have saved Jamie, but instead he did nothing. And then he lied about it. And you knew he was lying.”

  “No,” my mother said. “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is, Mom. I know it is.” I knew because I knew her tell. Phil licked his lips and got a blank look in his eyes. My mother fiddled with her hair. “I also know that you lied about my real father. I know he isn’t dead.” Jack had told I. “And I know that Jamie and I don’t have the same father.” Jack had told me that too. Jack was a good guy. He thought it was wrong for Phil to cheat me and wrong for my mother to lie to me. He said he knew where my father was and that, if I wanted, he could tell me how to contact him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  My mother stared at me. Detective Antonelli looked at her. He had watched her play with her hair when she talked about Jamie, just like she had when she’d talked about my father. And he knew that my mother had lied about my father because he had checked with Jack before he let her back into the room.

  Chapter Twelve

  A police officer escorted my mother out of the room. After she was gone, Detective Antonelli
said, “Is that why you killed your stepfather, David? Because he could have saved Jamie, but he didn’t?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” I said. “I swear I didn’t.”

  Detective Antonelli waited. So finally I told him the truth.

  The truth was that it was a coincidence that I happened to see Phil at the bank machine that night. I had gone for a walk, just like I said. I had stopped and bought an ice-cream bar, and I was just about to head home when I saw Phil. I ducked back out of sight because I didn’t want him to see me. I had a curfew, and if he caught me out after it, he’d tell my mother and she’d be all over me.

  “I ducked into the doorway of a store that was closed,” I said. “I was in the shadows, you know, so I figured he couldn’t see me. Then I watched so I could see when he was gone and maybe which direction he was going in.” I’d been hoping he wouldn’t jump in his car and drive straight home and find out I wasn’t there.

  “Then I saw this guy come up to him and say something to him. Phil said something back. I saw him shake his head. The guy said something else. Phil shoved him away and swore at him. He turned away from the guy. Then I saw the guy take out a gun. He pointed it at Phil. I knew he was going to shoot. I thought about yelling something, but I was afraid the guy might shoot at me instead. The guy said something to Phil. Phil turned. The guy shot him.”

  I’d been stunned. I could see it was going to happen, and at the same time I couldn’t believe it actually would.

  “Then the guy took his wallet and ran away.”

  “Did you see him before he ran?” Detective Antonelli said.

  I nodded.

  “Could you identify him, David?”

  I said I probably could. I said I could probably describe him pretty well too. And that was the truth. His face was burned into my brain.

  “I ran over to where Phil was,” I said. “He was breathing, but he was also making a sort of gurgling sound. He looked at me. But I just stood there. I couldn’t move. He had his keys in his hands, and I saw that picture of my brother and thought about Phil, with his display case full of swimming medals and ribbons, just sitting in that boat while Jamie drowned.” I also thought about his face when he told my mother that he had frozen. I thought about him licking his lips when he told the paramedics and the cops the same thing. I thought about him waving that key chain under everyone’s nose and telling them his son had drowned. I remembered all the free beers he got when he told people about Jamie. “Then Phil stopped making that noise. He stopped everything. I grabbed his keys and I ran. I broke the chain and took Jamie’s picture, and I threw the keys away. Then I went home.”

  Detective Antonelli was quiet for a minute. Then he said, “The pathologist said he was shot through the heart, David, and that he died within a minute or two. He said that even if the paramedics had arrived in three minutes, they wouldn’t have been able to do anything. He would have been dead already.”

  It took them nearly a month, but they finally caught the guy who shot Phil. They did it based on my description, and when they brought him in, they asked me to identify him. I don’t have to go to court because the guy made a deal with the prosecutor. He got life for second-degree murder but is eligible for parole in fifteen years, which means he could get out in eight. My mother cried when she heard that.

  Jack doesn’t come around as much as he used to, and my mother doesn’t talk about him. I think she’s mad at him for telling me about my dad. I still haven’t decided what to do about him. I’m curious, but not that curious. After all, it’s not like he ever came looking for me.

  And about Phil—I tell myself I didn’t do anything wrong. Phil would have died anyway. But I didn’t know that at the time. At the time, I just looked at him and remembered him licking his lips and remembered his face going blank when he told my mother there was nothing he could have done about Jamie. That’s why I didn’t call an ambulance for him. That’s why I didn’t do anything except stand there. In those few minutes, I did what Phil had done. I became Phil. I hate myself for that. But I know that I will never be Phil again. Not in a million years.

  My mother still doesn’t know what she’s going to do without him—or with me.

  Norah McClintock has been writing compelling fiction for years. Tell is her second Orca Soundings novel. Snitch, an ALA Popular Paperback, was published in 2005.

  Other titles in the Orca Soundings series

  Battle of the Bands

  K.L. Denman

  Blue Moon

  Marilyn Halvorso

  Breathless

  Pam Withers

  Bull Rider

  Marilyn Halvorson

  Charmed

  Carrie Mac

  Chill

  Colin Frizzell

  Crush

  Carrie Mac

  Dead-End Job

  Vicki Grant

  Death Wind

  William Bell Exit Point

  Laura Langston

  Exposure

  Patricia Murdoch

  Fastback Beach

  Shirlee Smith Matheson

  Grind

  Eric Walters

  The Hemingway Tradition

  Kristin Butcher

  Hit Squad

  James Heneghan

  Home Invasion

  Monique Polak

  Juice

  Eric Walters

  Kicked Out

  Beth Goobie

  My Time as Caz Hazard

  Tanya Lloyd Kyi

  No More Pranks

  Monique Polak

  No Problem

  Dayle Campbell Gaetz

  One More Step

  Sheree Fitch

  Overdrive

  Eric Walters

  Refuge Cove

  Lesley Choyce

  Saving Grace

  Darlene Ryan

  Snitch

  Norah McClintock

  Something Girl

  Beth Goobie

  Sticks and Stones

  Beth Goobie

  Stuffed

  Eric Walters

  Thunderbowl

  Lesley Choyce

  Tough Trails

  Irene Morck

  The Trouble with Liberty

  Kristin Butcher

  Truth

  Tanya Lloyd Kyi

  Who Owns Kelly Paddik?

  Beth Goobie

  Yellow Line

  Sylvia Olsen

  Zee’s Way

  Kristin Butcher

  Visit www.orcabook.com for more information.

  More Orca Soundings

  Exit Point

  by Laura Langston

  “I’m not dead. I’m still me. I still have a body and everything.”

  “You are still you, but you don’t have a body. What you’re seeing is a thought form.” He points to a tall gold urn up by the minister. “Your body is in there. You were cremated.”

  Thunk thunk, thunk thunk. My heart pounds in my chest. Dread mushrooms in my stomach. Sweat beads on my forehead.“But everybody knows death is the end. That there’s nothing left but matter.”

  “Death is only the beginning, Logan. Hannah knows that. Lots of people do.”

  Logan always takes the easy way out. After a night of drinking and driving, he wakes up to find he has been involved in a car accident and is dead. With the help of his guide, Wade, and the spirit of his grandmother, he realizes he has taken the wrong exit. He wasn’t meant to die. His life had a purpose—to save his sister!

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  Exposure

  by Patricia Murdoch

  I was happier than I had been for a long time. Everything was crashing down around Dana. Finally I was getting some justice. But I wanted a bigger helping. This wasn’t enough. I had to do something.

  I went into the washroom and dug a marker out of my pencil case. I drew a box and a couple of circles, with lines for a flash going off, on the outer wall of the first cubicle. No one would be able to miss it. It didn’t look exactly like
a camera, but it would do. And for the finishing touch I wrote SMILE DANA, with a happy face right beside it.

  More Orca Soundings

  Stuffed

  by Eric Walters

  “So, do we have a deal?” Mr. Evans asked.

  “Unbelievable,” I muttered under my breath.

  “I don’t understand,” Mr. Evans said.

  “The whole thing is unbelievable. First you try to threaten me. Then you try to bribe me. And now you do the two together, trying to bribe me and threatening me if I don’t take the bribe.”

  “I don’t like to think of it in those terms,” he said.

  When Ian and his classmates watch a documentary about the health concerns of eating fast food, Ian decides to start a boycott against a multinational food chain. Can Ian stand up for what he believes in? Can he take on a corporate behemoth and win?