Page 8 of I Will Ruin You

“Hi, honey,” I said.

“It worked,” Rachel said, eyeing me through her glasses. “I was sending you a message from my brain to your brain to wake up.”

“I’ll be darned,” I said, raising my head from the pillow. “You have a rare gift.”

Her face brightened. “You got me something?”

“Not that kind of gift. A talent.”

She looked only mildly disappointed. “I was also reading your dreams.”

I had to hope she was not as skilled at that as she was at sending me a wake-up call. No seven-year-old should be able to see what was in my head.

“You were dreaming about cheeseburgers,” she said.

“You sure you’re not just reading your own dreams?”

She smiled. “I can read minds, too.”

“Have you read your mom’s this morning?”

Rachel smile cracked. “No.”

I shouldn’t even have asked. It was an underhanded way to try to find out where I stood this morning, and it wasn’t fair to drag Rachel into it.

“But Mom did say you should take the weekend off and not go back to school until Monday, and I concur.”

“Concur?” I said.

Her parents were both educators, so I shouldn’t have been surprised Rachel used, on occasion, a more broad vocabulary.

A glance at the bedside table clock told me it was closing in on eight. “Get ready for school,” I said, and Rachel departed. Bonnie and I had kept her out of her second-grade class Tuesday and Wednesday, worried there might be some kind of fallout from the events of Monday, that maybe some reporters would show up at her school, attempt to ask her questions about what her father had been through. Bonnie, an elementary school principal—not at the one Rachel attended—had taken a couple of days herself, but returned to work yesterday, leaving me on my own.

I’d walked Rachel to school yesterday. I didn’t want to let her out of my sight right now, and even before Monday’s incident we’d been worried about Rachel crossing the street, what with all the truck traffic lately. I think it’s fair to say she was almost as reluctant to let me out of her sight. She’d almost lost her father four days ago, and attempts to shield her from what had happened had been fruitless. That first night, she had slept between Bonnie and me, afraid something might happen to either one of us by morning. Trouble was, I was the one waking up in a cold sweat, startling her and Bonnie, so the next night she went back to her own room.

I’d decided not to wait until Monday to return to Lodge High. I’d tidied up the boat that sat on a trailer in our driveway, searched through some old boxes in the garage and thrown out three bags’ worth of stuff, gone through the fridge and pitched anything that was past its expiry date. I needed people to talk to, even if the one thing they were going to want to talk about was the one thing I didn’t want to talk about.

I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I had small bandages on the left side of my neck and forehead. I’d been hit by shattered glass that had blown out of the double doors when Mark LeDrew’s dynamite vest went off. It could have been worse... I mean, for me. It couldn’t have been worse for Mark. It was a wonder I hadn’t ended up dead, or at the very least blind.

When Mark tripped, he was facing away from me, and so was his explosive vest. Investigators determined that only one of the sticks detonated—Mark’s reputation as a fuckup extended to his skills at wiring a bomb. But still, one stick packed a punch, blowing him to bits and sending shock waves out in all directions. I had already started to turn away when the glass panels in the door shattered, sending shards my way.

I showered, keeping the water off the bandages as much as possible, shaved and dressed, and threw on a sport jacket, which amounted to my school uniform. It was not, needless to say, the same one I’d been wearing Monday. That bloodied jacket had been taken by the forensic team, and even if they ever offered to return it, I didn’t want it. It was not going to the dry cleaner’s.

When I got to the kitchen, Bonnie was sitting at the table sipping her coffee and pretending to read the news on her iPad. She would normally have left for work by now, but was clearly waiting to see me before departing. She barely looked up.

“Hey,” I said.

“You’re really going back today.” Not a question. More a statement of disapproval.

I grabbed a cup and went to the coffee maker. “Back on the horse, and all that.”

“You don’t have to be a hero. You’ve proved that.”

I didn’t hear anything praiseworthy in that. More like exasperation. According to Bonnie, this was my failing. A recidivist rescuer. I’m not saying she was wrong. I had a history that predated my encounter with Mark LeDrew.

She continued. “I’m not saying don’t go back. I just thought, it’s Friday. Go back Monday. Then it’s a whole week. You heard what Marta said. It’s like when cops are involved in a traumatic incident. They’d take more time before returning to duty, and they’re trained for this kind of thing. They’d probably go for counseling, too.”

Marta Harper, a detective with the Milford police, was Bonnie’s sister, and one of the first on the scene after LeDrew died. She’d been to the house a couple of times since the event, once in an official capacity, and once as a concerned sister-in-law.