Chapter 74

After the fire, he thought he would go right to Uncle Morris’s house. Somehow things didn’t work out that way. Uncle Morris and Aunt Eunice were on vacation, a last-minute camping trip, gone an entire week.

They placed him with a family until they could find his uncle. A family that did this all the time, a foster family who also took in children short term.

There were no foster children there that week, just two teenage girls and the mother.

And the father.

“I can see you like this.”

“I wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t like it. You know you like it.”

“It’s our little secret.”

“No one will believe you anyway. I am the school principal. I am known in this town.”

“A boy who likes this sort of thing isn’t normal. If you tell anyone, they will put you in a home for boys like this.”

He hadn’t thought of this in years. In thirty years. He hadn’t thought of this since it happened.

“Your black soul will never find peace.”

That woman was right. He was damned for what he’d done. All the things he’d done.

He surveyed the group sitting terrified before him.

They had a child with them. A child. Did he have parents? Or did he only have this grandmother? And Helen and Scott were both here. Sarah, his self-chosen new guardian, was here, along with her apartment building family of helpers. The old lady was right. He couldn’t kill them all. He never wanted to kill them all. And if he did, this little boy and the babies would become wards of the state. Like he had been.

He would do anything to prevent that.