She unlocked the trunk. “Help me.”
They lifted the bicycle into the back of the car, but it wouldn’t fit well enough to allow the compartment to be closed and locked. She found a spool of wire in the tool kit and used a length of that to tie down the trunk lid.
“Doesn’t the bicycle prove anything?” Colin demanded.
She turned on him. “It proves you were here.”
“Like I said.”
“But not with Roy.”
“He tried to kill me!”
“He tells me he was home last night from nine-thirty on.”
“Well, of course that’s what he’d tell you! But-”
“That’s also what his mother tells me.”
“It’s not true.”
“Are you calling Mrs. Borden a liar?”
“Well, she probably doesn’t know she’s lying.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Roy probably told her he was home, in his room, and she believed him.”
“She knows he was home, not just because he told her so, but because she was home last night, too.”
“But did she actually talk to him?”
“What?”
“Last night? Did she talk to him? Or did she just assume he was up in his room?”
“I didn’t grill her in detail about-”
“Did she actually see him last night?”
“Colin-”
“If she didn’t actually see him,” Colin said excitedly, “she can’t know for sure that he was up there in his room.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No. It isn’t. They don’t talk to each other much in that house. They don’t pay attention to each other. They don’t go looking for each other to strike up a conversation.”
“She’d know he was there when she looked in to say good night.”
“But that’s just what I’m trying to tell you. She’d never do that. She’d never go out of her way to say good night to him. I know it. I’d bet on it. They don’t act like other people. There’s something really strange about them. There’s something wrong in that house.”
“What do you think it is?” she asked angrily. “Are they invaders from another planet?”
“Of course not.”
“Like in one of those crazy goddamned books you’re always reading?”
“No.”
“Should we call Buck Rogers to save us?”
“I just… I was only trying to say that they don’t seem to love Roy.”
“That’s an awful thing to say.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s true.”
She shook her head, amazed. “Did it ever occur to you that you might be too young to fully understand an emotion as complex as love, let alone all the forms it can take? My God, you’re an inexperienced fourteen-year-old boy! Who are you to judge the Bordens on something like that?”
“But if you could see the way they act. If you could hear the way they talk to each other. And they never do anything together. Even we do more things together than the Bordens do.”
“‘Even we’? What do you mean by that?”
“Well, we don’t do many things together, do we? I mean as a family.”
There were things in her eyes that he didn’t want to see. He looked away.
“In case you’ve forgotten,” she said, “I’m divorced from your father. And also in case it somehow slipped your mind, it was a bitter divorce. The pits. So what the hell do you expect? Do you think the three of us should go on picnics now and then?”
Colin shuffled his feet in the grass. “I mean even just you and me. The two of us. We don’t see much of each other, and the Bordens see even less of Roy.”
“When do I have time, for God’s sake?”
He shrugged.
“I work hard,” she said.
“I know.”
“Do you think I like working as hard as I do?”
“You seem to.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Then why-”
“I’m trying to build a future for us. Can you understand? I want to be sure we never have to worry about money. I want security. Big security. But you don’t appreciate it.”
“I do. I know you work hard.”
“If you appreciated what I’m doing for us, for you, then you wouldn’t have tried to upset me with this bullshit story about Roy trying to kill you and-”
“It’s not bullshit.”
“Don’t use that word.”
“What word?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Bullshit?”
She slapped his face.
Shocked, he put a hand to his cheek.
“Don’t smirk at me,” she said.
“I wasn’t.”
She turned away from him. She walked a few steps into the grass and stared at the junkyard for a while.
He almost cried. But he didn’t want her to see him crying, so he bit his lip and held the tears back. After a while, the hurt and humiliation were replaced by anger, and then he didn’t have to bite his lip any more.
When she gathered her composure, she came back to him. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I lost my temper, and that’s a bad example to set.”
“It didn’t hurt.”
“You upset me so much.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“You upset me because I know what’s going on.” He waited.
“You came out here last night on your bike,” she said. “But not with Roy. I know who you came with.”
He said nothing.
“Oh,” she said, “I don’t know their names, but I know what kind of kids they are.”
He blinked. “Who’re you talking about?”
“You know who I’m talking about. I’m talking about these other friends of yours, these smart-ass kids you see standing on street comers these days, the punks on those skateboards who try to run you off in the gutter when you walk by them.”
“You think kids like that would want anything to do with me? I’m one of the people they’d run into the gutter.”
“You’re being evasive.”
“I’m telling the truth. Roy was the only friend I had.”
“Nonsense.”
“I don’t make friends easily.”
