You'll Thank Me for This by Nina Siegal (top novels txt) 📗

their kids, especially if it’s the first time she’s away from home for the night. I remember when my son did a dropping for the first time. My wife was worried out of her mind. But everyone does it. We did it when we were kids. This is Holland. We do things a little differently than you do in America, but you’ll get used to it.”

Grace was in a mood to rant, and she would have at that moment if she didn’t need to be done with this exchange as quickly as possible. Droppings may have been a nice tradition, but in today’s world, was it so American of her to wonder whether it was wise to just let kids wander off at night into the biggest national park in the country? Someone might accuse her of being overly vigilant, and maybe she was. But it didn’t matter how safe everything was supposed to be, or how good everyone was supposed to feel about tradition. Grace knew that things could go horribly wrong. And sometimes when you least expected it.

The device started whirring, and it spit out a tiny little stub of paper. He shoved the slip of paper through her open car window. “This is the number and date for your speeding ticket. In a few weeks you’ll get a notice from the city traffic department with the official bill. You can send in the money or pay it online. You have an additional fine for trying to flee the scene of the crime.”

“Fleeing the scene…” Grace stopped herself from arguing; that would not be at all helpful. She took the stub, and without waiting for his permission, she took off her seat belt and started to open the door of the car.

He wasn’t budging, though. “By the way, if you don’t hear from her in twenty-four hours, call 112. But I’m sure it’ll all be resolved by then.”

“Thanks, Officer,” she managed to say through her fake smile. Then finally, finally, at long last, he turned around, got back into his car, and drove off.

Chapter 23The Thud

In the distance, she heard the howl of the wolf again, low and long. It didn’t frighten Karin so much now, knowing how to scare him off. Martijn took it as a cue to start moving. “I think we’d better…” he said without finishing his sentence. He was still hovering over her.

She understood what he meant, but Karin didn’t want to stand up. It was that smell on him, that icky rose water. Why did he smell like Margot?

Karin had heard everything that happened this morning, even though Martijn probably didn’t know that. The kitchen was right underneath her bedroom. She hadn’t been able to hear everything they said downstairs, just muffled, garbled words that drifted up through the floorboards. But she knew they were arguing, and then they got louder and louder. For a moment it had sounded like it might be over, but then all of a sudden they were really screaming and, like, wrestling or something. She could hear jostling in the kitchen, and her mother say, “Jesus, Martijn, get your hands off me.” And then a scuffle. And then, “Let go of me!”

Then a crash and then the thud. Then this creepy silence.

She must have been the only one home. Jasper had just left for football practice, and Frank, her other loathsome stepbrother, always slept over at his girlfriend’s house now. If there had been sounds after that thud, even just normal sounds of people talking or walking around, she would have thought, Okay, whatever. But it was so quiet. She thought maybe her mom was dead.

Karin had run downstairs and, through the glass door to the kitchen, saw the two of them there. Her mom was sitting on the floor with her back against the kitchen cabinets, and Martijn was standing over her, his face red. Her mom wasn’t dead, but she was crying and clutching her shoulder. Karin had ducked away, out of view of the door. Because what could she do?

Now, as Karin looked up at the face of her stepfather in the dark, her stomach convulsed. He looked so cold and remote, like he had been drained of all his blood. Maybe he was a vampire. Maybe he’d just come to suck the life out of them. They had been happy before he came along. Before her dad died. Before everything changed.

She began to clutch her abdomen as if she were suffering from cramps. “Ow,” she said, not quite sure whether she was faking it for Martijn or whether her stomach really hurt. She did feel sick.

“Sounds like the wolves might be coming back,” said Martijn, ignoring her and reaching down to help her up. Without waiting for her to agree, he hauled her to her feet. “We’d better get moving. Not that I think the wolves are coming for us or anything, but it’ll be safer if we could all be at the camp together. It’s really late.”

There was that time when Karin had noticed red marks on her mother’s wrist, a band of bruises that went all around her wrist, like a bracelet. Her mother had worn a long-sleeved shirt, one of those yoga shirts where you stick your thumbs through the holes, but Karin had seen it when her mother rolled up her sleeves to fill up Karin’s bath.

Karin had asked her mom about it, and her mom had said she took the neighbor’s dogs out for a walk and the leash had pulled on her wrist; the dogs had run so fast! Karin got excited to hear that some neighbors had dogs she didn’t know about, but she was angry that her mom had not let her walk the neighbor’s dogs…She knew how much Karin loved dogs. But the dogs were never mentioned again, and certainly there were no more opportunities for taking them out, even though Karin asked a lot of times. Wow, she thought now, I’m really stupid.

Now