“Doesn’t look like you’ll be having class tonight.”
Cade looked up from his Wheaties. They were his father’s favorite—he actually really believed that Breakfast of Champions stuff, and it was all they’d had at the house for years and years. Once, Cade had snuck Froot Loops in to share with his sister, and when his father found out, well . . . Cade may as well have been sneaking heroin.
“What do you mean?” Cade asked. His father was scrolling through his iPad, like he did every morning now. A couple years ago, he had declared paper passé and decided e-books and e-papers were the only things worth his time.
“Who was your teacher? Stratford?”
Cade’s pulse sped up, until it seemed like little lightning bolts were speeding through his body. “Yeah?” he asked, forcing his voice to be level. Calm. He thought about what he’d normally say about Stratford. “He’s such an asshole.”
His father raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat. “Well, you might want to keep that opinion to yourself. It would appear he’s missing. He was last seen”—he paused, scrolling through the paper—“last Friday. Probably after your class. It appears that he was headed through the parking lot, toward his home.”
Cade forced himself to take another spoonful of Wheaties. They were dry and scratchy in his throat and a pain to swallow. Wait. Hadn’t Kip said he’d seen him after class? He must have gone to the police.
“He didn’t show at class on Monday,” Cade said, chasing another soggy rectangle of wheat around his cereal bowl. “I told the office. We waited a little longer after that, but eventually the whole class just left.”
“You told them?” His father pointed at him. “You?”
Cade suddenly was uncomfortable, like he was too big for his chair. “Uh, yeah. Just the receptionist. She didn’t seem concerned. Stratford’s a little . . . intense. I didn’t want him blaming the class when no one was there.”
Mr. Sano shook his head. “Just surprised you were the one to do the right thing. That’s all.”
Cade should have been used to it. He should have. It wasn’t like his father didn’t do this every time they were together. But still, the words burrowed their way through his skin and into his stomach, where they sat, weighty and sick.
Mr. Sano laid the iPad on the table and considered his son. He pointed at him with the spoon.
“Cade, if there’s something going on, I need to know. You need to tell me.” He paused. “Your sister talked to me, and I helped her, you know.”
“Yeah, you helped her, all right.”
Cade’s father clenched his hand into a fist around the spoon and rested it very calmly on the table. “Would you have preferred she suffered the alternative?” he asked. His voice was quiet. Except for the death grip he had on his utensil, he was a picture of tranquility.
This was when he was at his most dangerous.
“No, sir.”
“That’s what I thought,” Mr. Sano said. He dropped his spoon into the bowl, and milk slopped out onto the table. He didn’t bother to clean it up. He never did. That was for maids.
Cade finished his cereal and began to stand up, but his father directed him back to his chair with a single look.
“What are you going to do with your day, now that studying is out?”
Cade knew the answer. “I’m going to see about a job. Maybe an office aide or something.”
“Women’s work,” his father snorted. “Still, better than nothing. Want me to make a call?”
“No, Dad. I’d like to do this on my own, if that’s okay with you.”
His father nodded, and for a moment, he almost softened. “Give it your best.”
Sweeping up his iPad, he left without another word. It wasn’t until he was gone—far gone, into his car and backing out of the driveway—that Cade said what he had wanted to.
“I’m not my sister.”
The only reply was the distant echo of one of the maids vacuuming down the hall.
But it didn’t matter. His father would never believe that. Cade stood up and carried his bowl to the sink. He brushed his teeth and grabbed his keys. He was leaving.
But he wasn’t going to look for a job.
He was going to get through this whole unpleasant situation and he wasn’t going to ask his father for any help. What would his father really do for him, anyway? Get him a good lawyer? Have him turn himself in? Nothing that could really fix anything.
He climbed into his car and backed up out of the driveway. But he didn’t go anywhere. He just drove. And drove. He drove by the school, and he drove nearly all the way to the farm before he turned around. And he stopped by the river to look at the waters, which were still higher than normal. He’d heard there had been storms up north, too. Flooding, even.
He hoped that meant Stratford’s body was being carried farther away. He imagined it going all the way down to the ocean, where it would sink into the sea and be eaten by sharks or some other hungry ocean animal.
He sank down onto a half-rotted branch that had fallen from a tree during the storm.
He needed time to think. To plan. Because he had something in mind.
And it all had to do with the extra bike he had in the garage.