worth it; the children hopping down the carousel’s exit steps had some of the biggest smiles Libby had ever seen. Even the few disembarking adults looked sufficiently satisfied.
Simple joys, Libby thought. It
A group of four ten- or eleven-year-old girls had stepped into line behind Trevor. He looked over at Libby, saw her watching, and waved. Libby waved back, smiling now, and finished off the Mountain Dew.
She slid farther into her chair, realizing she’d be sitting here for a while and that she might as well get comfortable. Her thoughts drifted back to Mike.
Libby had suggested they meet at the mall. She’d told Mike she had some shopping to do and that it would be easier for the both of them, but that had been a lie. It would be easier for Mike, for sure—the mall was a lot closer to his place than her house—but Libby had gone more than a little bit out of her way. There was nothing necessary about the new blouse and three new paperbacks she’d picked up, nor about the Dragonball Z action figure she’d bought Trevor at the toy store.
The truth was, she’d arranged for Mike to meet them at the mall because she didn’t want him coming to the house.
She didn’t want him to see what she’d done to the place.
That was stupid, of course—it was
Since Mike had left, she hadn’t changed much of anything. She hadn’t rearranged the furniture, had kept the pictures hanging where they’d always hung; there were even some of Mike’s old clothes folded on the top shelf of the closet. She hadn’t been stagnant on purpose, hadn’t left things the same out of some misguided sense of nostalgia. She simply hadn’t had the time or the inclination to reorganize. Or so she told herself.
And did she have any reason to believe otherwise? The divorce had been a mutual thing—which sounded like something you said about a week-long high school romance rather than an eight-year marriage, but it was true— they’d both known they would do better apart. Things had gotten too hard; by the end, they been fighting almost every night. Even their love for Trevor hadn’t been enough to hold them together.
So redecorating the house a little shouldn’t have been a problem, and yet it had taken her all this time to do it, and now that she had, she was afraid of what Mike might think and feeling guilty.
Stupid. She hadn’t really done much. Taken down a few pictures, replaced a rug in the entryway, repositioned the couch and the television, and bought another end table. Little things, mostly. Although Mike would probably notice (the couch at least, the big leather dinosaur of a thing), he wouldn’t care. Surely he wouldn’t be hurt. Would he?
Libby wasn’t sure. They’d shared the house for a long time. Since he left, he’d come to pick up or drop off Trevor at least twice a week. She supposed that on some level it might still seem like home to him. And now she’d changed it without him.
Libby sighed and looked over at the empty cup. She’d been right about needing more to drink—she was thirsty already.
Trevor shuffled forward a few steps and rubbed absently at the tip of his nose. He still had the five-dollar bill clutched between his fingers, and Libby wondered why he hadn’t stuck it in his pocket. Silly guy. She beamed.
The carousel stopped to let off its current passengers. The first thirty or forty waiters climbed onto the platform and mounted their animals, and the line behind them surged forward to fill the void. Libby watched Trevor carefully until the progression stopped and everyone resettled. When they stilled again, Trevor turned around to the girls behind him and said something that made them laugh.
That was Trevor, always quick to make friends, whether they were five years older than him or not.
Libby thought it would probably be okay for her to go grab a refill. She could watch over her shoulder and keep an eye on Trevor the whole time.
She un-slumped and pushed out of the chair. Carrying the empty cup to the taco station, she glanced back toward Trevor (fine, of course) and then at her watch. 4:45. Mike would be here soon—he was usually early. Afterward, Libby would have the rest of the weekend to herself. She’d miss her son, as always, but she would enjoy the quiet time. Stepping to the soda fountain, she thought of long, steamy baths, glasses of wine, and relaxing music.
She hadn’t done any work that morning before leaving the house, had planned on getting in a few hours that night after she returned alone, but now she thought she might put it off until tomorrow. She made most of her money from website design, but she’d actually gotten a little ahead in the last couple of weeks and thought she could afford to take both the day and night off. At least this once. She’d have the rest of the weekend for any catch-up work that needed doing.
She dumped her ice, replaced it with some fresh, and held the cup under the Mountain Dew nozzle until it brimmed. Refitting her plastic lid and moving back toward the table kept her so busy that she didn’t actually look up until she was almost halfway there. While she slipped the straw between her lips and took her first drink, her eyes scanned the crowd for Trevor. He wasn’t where she’d seen him last, just in front of the group of young girls. She detoured to the right, around tables of couples, families and friends, trying to get a better angle.
It wasn’t her angle, and it wasn’t that she couldn’t see him.
Trevor had vanished.
TWO
The man had been watching the boy for a long time now, sometimes rubbing the stubble on his chin slowly and rhythmically, the way another man might pet a cat, sometimes standing still as a tree with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes wide, studying.
The boy was brown haired and slender. Not skinny, not wimpy, but lean, like a mountain lion or a coyote. Once, a long time ago, he’d known another boy who looked almost the same. His name had been Georgie, and he had been the man’s brother.
The man who had been Dave, and not Davy, for just over twenty-three years, had blood under his fingernails, but he’d managed to wash most of the splatter off his face. One splotch lay caked in the crease behind his ear, but for now the uneven locks of his poorly cut hair hid it from view.
It was his birthday. Thirty years old. A special birthday.
Still watching the boy, Dave pulled a toothpick from the breast pocket of his shirt, where he kept a small stash of them. The shirt was not flannel, nor was it checked. It was a plain blue button-up that he’d stolen off a backyard clothesline especially for today. He’d kept it hanging on the back of his door that morning until after the bloodshed and his mostly successful cleanup. He stuck the toothpick in his mouth and chomped. Then he pulled a twig from a nearby branch, put it in his pocket to replace the pick. Much better that way. Balanced.
He wore olive-green cargo pants. In the right cargo pocket, he had a hunting knife with a razor-sharp blade. In the opposite pocket: another. He reached both hands into their respective compartments and ran his fingers down the knives’ rubber grips. They were identical weapons, or nearly so, and although it wasn’t exactly a gun at each hip, Dave couldn’t help but compare himself to an old western cowboy.
The second knife was just a backup, something he had no intention of using or needing, but Dave liked knowing it was there. He’d never been a boy scout, never had that “be prepared” jargon brainwashed into him, but he’d never been a moron either and he never did anything half-assed.
He watched and chewed.
The boy’s mother had gone inside the house almost half an hour earlier, left her son to play. The kid had spent ten of those thirty minutes bouncing a ratty old tennis ball off the side of the house, and then he’d ventured across the back yard to the edge of the property (near Dave’s hiding spot, this was), where a tree house sat high in the branches of a fork-trunked oak. The fort looked so weathered and cracked that it must have been older than the boy himself.
Dave had noticed it before. He’d come here many times.
