The Good Son by Carolyn Mills (free e reader txt) 📗

updates on the case, I don’t want to be the last one to know. The news segments revolve through a seemingly endless loop of world politics, weather systems, sports, and entertainment before finally landing on the investigation into Amy Nessor’s murder. My heart ratchets into overdrive. Amy’s elementary school picture appears in the top left-hand corner of the screen while the news anchor, in his sombre grey suit, gravely reveals the latest development: the source of the information that led to the case being re-opened is an as-of-yet-unidentified inmate of Collins Bay Institution.

I should have known.

MY GRADE ELEVEN YEAR HAD some promising moments. I signed up for Mr. Hart’s photography class and discovered a new world involving f-stops, ISO values, contact sheets, and darkroom etiquette. It was the first class I truly enjoyed in high school. In addition to that, I ended up dating Tommy that year. He asked me out just as I was about to get on the bus at the end of the day so I barely had time to answer him before stepping through the doors. Then, when I was sitting down, I looked out the window and saw him standing beside the bus, smiling. He broke up with me a few months later for Ingrid, the captain of the girls’ soccer team, and we didn’t talk much after that. I pined after him for a few days, and my heart did this weird twisty thing whenever I saw him holding hands with her, but it wasn’t as if I was heartbroken. She probably made a way better girlfriend than I did.

Then, sometime after Christmas, when each fresh dumping of snow stopped being festive, Mom practically accosted me one day at the front door the minute I got home from school.

“I just found out from Lorraine that Darius is in jail!” she said. “Did you know anything about that?”

I was trying to take off my boots without getting slush on the hardwood. “Why would I know anything?” I said. “It was Ricky who was friends with him. Not me.” My hands had started to shake, making it difficult to untie my laces, but I had to know. “What’d he do?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

Mom looked around, as if someone might be lurking in a corner of the house, eavesdropping on our conversation. “I don’t know exactly, something to do with drugs. Remember when he threatened Ricky with a knife that time? I’m glad he’s behind bars. Something wasn’t right with him.”

I let out a shaky breath. Knowing that Darius was in jail gave me both a jolt of satisfaction and a creeping sense of dread. I avoided Mom’s eyes as I moved past her into the kitchen. “What’s for dinner?” I asked, opening the fridge, doing my best to appear unconcerned.

“Leftovers. Pulled pork.”

Over the course of the next few days I waited nervously for something to happen. Darius going to jail felt like the beginning of the end to me and I kept expecting our house of cards to come crashing down at any minute. Each day, when I came home, I met Mom with my breath half-held, assessing her face for signs of shock or distress or just plain, blank disappointment. But everything went on the same as before.

After a month, I relaxed a little. Ricky came over sometime around Valentine’s Day with chocolates and roses for Mom. He knew about Darius, but the fact that his former best friend was in jail didn’t seem to bother him in the least.

“I’m certainly glad you stopped hanging around him when you did,” Mom said. “I heard he was into drug trafficking! You know what goes along with that. He was a bad egg from the beginning, wasn’t he?”

“He was a loser,” Ricky said. “Dunford breeds losers.”

He was looking right at me when he said this, but I ignored him. I really didn’t care what Ricky thought anymore.

“You seem to like hanging out with enough of them,” I said eventually, not looking up from my plate of pasta.

“Only the pretty ones,” Ricky replied.

I SET DOWN MY MUG of Mr. Noodles. I can’t not talk to Ricky now, not after hearing about the source being an inmate, so I send him a text. Maybe he’s already been arrested. There was nothing mentioned in the news about suspects or arrests, though. Why on earth would Darius speak up now? He’s been in and out of jail so many times, you’d think he’d know better than to open his mouth and admit to one more thing. The last I heard he was serving time for stealing a car, which brings to mind the red ten-speed he’d stashed in our yard so many years ago.

Where are you? I text Ricky. Mom’s in hospital. She had a heart attack.

I would put money on it that right now Ricky’s only thinking about himself. I want him to know exactly what else is at stake. For someone who checks his phone compulsively, it takes Ricky an awfully long time to respond. With every minute that passes, my panic inflates. Finally, he writes back.

Spoke to her earlier. She seems fine.

SHE HAD A HEART ATTACK! I want to scream, but the best I can do is put my message in all caps.

I know. So don’t give her anything else to stress about, Ricky replies.

Is he kidding right now? If I wasn’t practically on my deathbed I would drive to Toronto and string my brother up by his testicles.

Then again, who knows what Darius actually admitted to? I wouldn’t put it past him to lie to save himself. I wish I knew more about what was happening, about what new information the police have. I think back to the camping trip when I almost came clean to Walter and his family and I am filled with the same nagging doubts that dogged me as a child.

What did I really see that Tuesday afternoon?

CHAPTER THREE

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I STOPPED GETTING IN FIGHTS during my senior years of high school,