Page 17 of Shelter
Cole’s breath stilled at my question. I knew this because his chest beneath my working fingers froze. I looked up at him and saw his jaw was locked tight.
“You really want to know?” he asked through clenched teeth.
Fury seemed to make the ice-blue of his eyes even colder. I swallowed.DidI really want to know?
Yes.
I nodded.
“Because it was all fake,” he spat, his lip curling in disgust.
I frowned. “What do you mean?” The party had looked pretty real to me.
Cole shook his head, his eyes never leaving mine. “My mother didn’t fall down the stairs,” he said, hatred dripping from his voice. “He pushed her.”
Chapter 4
COLE
The look of shock on Elise Cormier’s face was something I wouldn’t forget. Ever.
She was just a kid. Younger than Ava and still in elementary school. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her the truth, but she was living under my father’s roof now, so she probably deserved some warning.
Besides, it felt good to tell somebody. Even a little kid.
And even though she was young, I knew I could trust her not to make a fuss. She hadn’t made a peep about Halloween night years ago when Ava had almost gotten in the car with that creep.
She hadn’t even asked why we couldn’t tell. Elise had just kept her mouth shut.
But now her mouth hung open, her eyes going just as wide. When she finally blinked and lifted her jaw, she hit me with questions.
“Did anyone call the police?”
I had to clamp my jaw shut to keep from telling her that believing in the police was like believing in Santa Claus. Anyone looking into her wide amber eyes would guess she still believed in both and the Easter Bunny too.
“The police came to the emergency room,” I told her, because this was true.
The confusion on her face screwed up tighter. “Well, didn’t your daddy—”
“My father,” I corrected. I hadn’t called him Daddy in years.
Elise flinched a little before starting over. “Didn’t your father get arrested?”
I shook my head because this was the part I didn’t want to admit to her or anybody. Of course, Mom wouldn’t tell them what he’d done. Ava and I had been in bed when it happened. But I hadn’t been asleep. I could never sleep when they were fighting. Afterward — when the ambulance was on its way — I’d had to shake Ava awake and tell her to get dressed.
So, neither of us hadseenanything.
And with both of my parents’ eyes on me while my mother awaited X-rays, that was what I’d told the police.
“I was in bed. I didn’t see anything.”
They hadn’t believed me. I could tell by the way the older cop with the short hair and thick glasses had stared at me that they hadn’t. But if everyone said accident, that was what the police wrote down.
“He lied to them,” I said, leaving out that I had lied to them, too. We all had. But Elise Cormier didn’t look satisfied. In fact, she looked angry, but she didn’t ask me any more questions about that.
I looked down at my shirt. The stain had faded to almost nothing. Facing her mirror, I saw my bottom lip had swollen like a grape, a quarter-inch slit marking the flesh. I’d need to ice it tonight. Still, tomorrow, Mr. Shen would ask how it happened, and I would have to tell him — in Chinese — that I got it at karate.
Of course, the mark would still be there Monday when I went to karate, and Sensei Kelly would know I hadn’t earned it on the mat. And even though I hoped she wouldn’t, she’d ask about it too. It was easier to lie to Mr. Shen in a foreign language than it was to Sensei Kelly in my own. I would feel both of their eyes follow me during my whole lesson on the days I turned up with a stray bruise or scratch on my face, but it was Sensei who would ask more questions. Watch me more closely.
