Anarchy of the Mice

Chapter Twenty-Three

I got home in time to cook. The guys wanted to do a post-mortem immediately afterward, but I said no. I was riding a train back to New Jersey—back to my children. I needed to touch them, to sit across a table and hear what small, weird stuff had consumed their days.

I needed to talk to Zach.

It took all my restraint not to march directly upstairs and confront him. This would only close him off—and blow my cover besides. I'd called ahead to Granny the second Piper disappeared on her bike and knew Zach was safe. That was the important thing.

I started baked potatoes in the microwave and shaped four square, sandwich bread-sized hamburger patties.

Karen was busy in the living room, grouping her dolls into some intricate hierarchies. Zach came clopping downstairs and plucked an arc of bell pepper off my cutting board.

"How goes it?" I said, whisking a vinaigrette. "Big happenings in the world of Zach McGill?"

He rolled his eyes at my long-running gag, which dated back to a TV show he watched in preschool, The World of Kimmy McManus.

I asked if there'd been a quiz in European History.

"Nope." He garbled the word, a pepper in his mouth. "Boring old lecture. Jacobins, guillotines."

I controlled my outrage reflex. European History was Zach's seventh hour, which met at the exact time he'd been in downtown Manhattan.

"Are people excited for the carnival Friday night?"

"If they are, they're gonna be pissed."

My nose wrinkled at the word, but I let it go. "Why is that?"

"Because it's off."

"Off? I was going to make my German chocolate cupcakes for the cakewalk."

He did a lip-smacking moan. "Oh do make those. But the carnival's history. Principal said we don't have budget for extra security, so it's canceled."

I finished the carrot matchsticks with a thrust of my knife, then brushed everything into my vinaigrette with the back of the blade. Tossed in bagged lettuce.

From the hall, "What's canceled? It better not be Hannity! I need my Seany Boy ..."

Following the voice came Granny, slippers sliding over linoleum. She snatched two almonds from a bowl on the counter, then took up her customary spot at the dinner table.

"The school carnival," I said. "It's these Blind Mice—they disrupt everything. A lot of kids had their hearts set on that carnival. Parents, teachers too. Shaking up institutions is one thing, but there's a cost."

Ostensibly I was speaking to Granny, but my eyes were on Zach. He stared back through a tuft of lank hair and never blinked once.

How was this my son? He'd just flirted with the most notorious outlaws on the planet, and now he's munching peppers and lying to my face? How was I ever going to know anything about this kid? Whether he was depressed over a girl. Whether his peer group was pressuring him to smoke weed, or worse.

Also: is there any remorse? After Ted Blackstone, I hadn't slept for days. I kept envisioning his face—and the faces of his soccer-playing twin daughters when they learned their dad had died. My pillow had a voice, and it whispered that I'd done it, I'd let it happen, I could tell myself what I wanted but the truth was I could've stopped it ...

Did Zach have that voice? I saw no sign of it. Maybe because I hadn't given it to him—had never made his consequences tough, too guilty about our non-Norman Rockwell home to hold him accountable. I could still remember picking him up from the third grade after a fight. I showed up livid—"Zachary Thomas, we never strike a fellow human being"—but after Miss Hansen took me aside and explained the other boy had been teasing Zach about his father, asking why he never helped coach Little League, or watched the games, or taught Zach not to throw like a girl!, I lost my resolve.