Page 69 of Thicker Than Water
“You think he’s guilty,” Aiden says. “Don’t you?”
His expression startles me even more than his question. He doesn’t look angry, or accusatory, or even sad. His face is an odd blend of curiosity and—hope, it seems. Like he’s been alone with something for a while, and he’s seeing now that he might be able to share it.
More than anything, it’s that hope, that need inside him, that helps me to speak.
“Aiden.” My voice is just a drip at first, then a gush: “You’ve been suffering for days. And I know it’s more than Dad’s coma. More than him being a suspect.” I touch his cheek, and he doesn’t recoil. “Tell me what it is.”
He’s still for a while, eyes pointed away. I withdraw my hand from his face, and he reaches into his jacket pocket to pull out his phone. For a moment, I think he’s ignoring me, about to text someone or open some game, but as he speaks, he only holds the phone in his palm.
“I lied to you,” he says, “about last Sunday night. I did leave the house.”
Goose bumps swell on my arms.
“I couldn’t sleep. And at some point, I heard one of you guys head downstairs and open the front door—which was weird, you know? It was almost two in the morning. So I looked out my window, and I saw Dad out there, walking down the driveway.”
I tilt my head, unable to imagine how this story will end. Dread fills me all the same.
“Where did he go?” I ask.
“Down to the curb. To the trash can.”
Aiden rests his other palm against his phone, sandwiching it between his hands. He stares at it solemnly, like he’s swearing an oath on a Bible, and my heart knocks. Part of me wants to tell him to stop, I was wrong, we don’t have to talk, we can lie to each other a little longer.
I wrestle that impulse down.
“He threw something away, and then he came inside. Went back to bed. I tried to fall asleep, too, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I mean, why get up in the middle of the night to get rid of something? And why go all the way to the curb? I know garbage collection is Monday mornings, but it’s not like we don’t have trash cans in the house.”
Aiden clicks the button to awaken his phone. “So I went out there to see what it was.”
He opens his photos, swipes until he lands on one in particular. “And I found this.”
He passes the phone to me, and my hand trembles.
I shouldn’t look at the picture. The conclusion arrives with so much certainty that I almost hand the phone back to him, tell him to delete it, that if his father took such care to get rid of something, it must be something he never meant us to see. But when I look at Aiden, there’s so much pain in his eyes, it’s like he’s watching something die in front of him.
Whatever’s in this picture, I can’t leave him alone with it.
I hold my breath as I lower my gaze to the phone. Then I exhale in a rush, as if someone’s punched me, knocking the air from my lungs.
I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking at. Pale blue fabric. Buttons. But one thing is clear in the camera’s flash.
Blood.
Dried, dark splotches of it. The color of the roosters on our walls.
I recognize the fabric now. It’s one of Jason’s blazers. And I recall—with such blinding focus, like an interrogation light shined in my face—what he wore to the conference last Friday. A salmonbutton-down, which is still crumpled in our hamper upstairs. Gray slacks, from which I pulled the receipt with Gavin’s address. And a pale blue blazer, now spotted with blood.
My heart isn’t knocking anymore. It bangs.
“When I first saw this, I didn’t know what to make of it,” Aiden says. “I’m not even sure why I took the picture, other than… it was creepy—the timing of it all: Dad’s boss getting murdered, Dad throwing this away in the middle of the night. But then, a few days later, you and Auntsy came home and said he was a suspect, that the cops had all this evidence, and all I could think about was that jacket. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t pay attention in class. It was killing me.”
“Oh, honey—”
“You know the other night, in your room? When I said I was looking for cuff links?”
I manage a wary nod, watching as color creeps into his cheeks.
“I lied then, too. I was just trying to see what else Dad might be hiding, if there was more evidence somewhere. Because that’s what that stupid jacket is, right? Evidence. And I don’t understand it. I don’t understandhim.I don’t know why he’d… how he could…”
