In the near-empty parking lot of the Key Corners Family Medical Center, Susan buckled herself in and started her Corolla. She checked the dashboard clock. Had it only been two hours since this madness began?
She cleared the windshield of snow. She sighed as she spied the window to Eric’s room in the southwest wing. Much to his dismay, he would have to stay the night, maybe two. Still, his father would have been proud of him. He’d been a pretty brave soldier in there.
“I hope you’re happy,” she said, casting her youngest child a biting glare.
Kelan stirred in his seat. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
“What did you think you were doing?”
Kelan shrugged sheepishly.
“You broke his nose, Kelan. Twice.” As Susan entered the road, she studied him from the corner of her eye.
“What?” he snapped. “I said I was sorry.”
“You don’t seem very sorry, mister.” They drove for a silent stretch. “Where’d you get it?”
“Get what?”
“That stick.”
“I dunno.”
“Wrong answer, kiddo.”
“I don’t know! … The park, I guess.”
“Last night? I don’t remember seeing it.”
Kelan turned to the side window.
“I asked you a question, young man.”
“I told you, I don’t remember.”
“So it just appeared out of thin air?”
Kelan rolled his eyes.
“Don’t you do that, child. You know I hate that.” Susan drove. “Why’d you keep it?”
No answer.
“Kelan.”
“I dunno. I need it.”
Susan almost asked why, but as they came up on the liquor store, her eyes met Earl Eckert’s as he looked up. The clerk was out front clearing snow from the entrance. His unsettling gaze followed her. She looked away in a hurry, negotiating a quick right turn down Main. “Situation my ass, you creep,” she muttered.
Kelan cast her a curious glance.
They passed Connelly’s Hardware and stopped at the intersection. Susan turned to her son. “Soon as we get home, it goes.”
“You can’t—”
Susan glared at Kelan. “Do you even care about what you did? Eric’s got cuts all over him. You could’ve put his eye out with that … that thing.”
She turned left. Kelan kept his silence, and this, more than anything, disturbed her. His lack of remorse was one thing, his lack of explanation another. It was as if he was hiding something … protecting a dark secret.
Yes. She knew that as sure as she had seen that deadness in his eyes. It was crazy, but that stick—she’d only had a glance at it in the chaos back at the house, had found it the most hideous thing she had ever seen—wanted him.
And she wanted it gone.