Gathering Dark Candice Fox (e reader TXT) 📖

“No.” Sasha followed me to Jamie’s room. “Bette Davis Eyes” was playing on the Sonos system and people were singing along in the yard. My slippers slapped on the marble tiles. “I want you to tell me how the hell this happened.”

Jamie was sitting on his bed, wearing only Super Mario boxer shorts. I’d never seen my child look so beaten, so exhausted with shame. I gathered him in my arms as Sasha closed the door behind us.

“What did you do, you silly little thing?” I asked.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know it was stupid,” he sobbed.

Despite everything, a laugh escaped my lips. “What happened, buddy?”

“I put Hugh Jackman away in a shoebox before I went out the back…” He was racked with sobs. “And when I came back he was gone. I just wanted a pet.”

“We’ve discussed this.” Sasha stood in the corner with her arms folded. “You can have a dog when you’re sixteen, depending on your grades. You don’t go stealing rats from people’s houses! Rats are not pets!”

“I’ll find it.” I stood and took Sasha by the shoulders and shifted her toward the door, trying my best not to shove her, though every fiber of my being told me to. “Get out, Sasha. Go back to your party.”

The rat trap wasn’t set. It was closed and unbaited, placed under the dresser, probably a baseless demonstration of Sasha’s anger serving only to terrify the boy. I picked it up and put it on the shelf, lay down on the carpet, and looked under every piece of furniture. Jamie sat on the floor next to me while I searched, his head in his hands. I opened his wardrobe and began checking every shoe, wincing as I slid my hand into the toes. In the right shoe of a pair of Nike Air Max 1 Ultras, my fingertips hit warm fur.

“I’ve got good news,” I said. Jamie lifted his head. I shook the shoe until Hugh Jackman rolled into my palm, a flailing ball of brown with pink paws gripping for purchase. Jamie crawled into my arms and I kissed his head.

“I’m so stupid!” he cried.

“You are not stupid,” I told him. I held his cheek and looked at his eyes. “You just did a stupid thing. Everybody does that sometimes. Including me. Hell, I’m the queen of doing stupid things. You can’t compete with me on thoughtless acts, Jimbo, so don’t even try.”

He hugged me. I rocked him a little until his sobs subsided.

Sasha was standing outside the door when I left Jamie’s bedroom. There were women at the end of the hall staring at us. Erin Gaille, my old tennis partner. Willow O’Leary, a former fellow wine-and-cheese-club member. The famous Francine Readley. I waved. They turned away, huddled together like startled birds. I slipped Hugh Jackman into the pocket of my hoodie and pulled the zipper shut on him.

“I’m going to have to get Jamie a tetanus shot tomorrow morning,” Sasha said.

“Was he bitten?”

“Does it matter?” Her eyes widened. “This is not something you take chances with, Blair.”

“Look,” I said. “I get it. Really, I do. I was freaked out by the gopher when I first held it. It’s very ratlike. And the feeling of it crawling on you takes a minute to get used to. But it’s kind of cute if you give it a chance. And think about it, Sasha. If it doesn’t bite you in the first thirty seconds, what the hell is it waiting for?”

“You’re nuts,” she sighed. “You’re just … Urgh.”

“I get why you—”

“No,” she snapped. “See, this is what you don’t get. Parenting—real parenting—is all about this shit. It’s about saying, ‘Hey, bringing a wild, flea-and-parasite-riddled piece of vermin trash into my house sounds like a fun idea, but I’m not going to do it because my kid might get rabies and die.’”

“Have you looked at the recorded human deaths attributed to gophers?” I asked. “I bet you have.”

“What the hell was his plan?”

“He didn’t have a plan,” I said. “He’s a child. He wanted a pet, saw one, and brought it home.”

“And what the hell was your plan?” She gestured to my pocket. “What is a rat doing in your house?”

“I’m babysitting it. It isn’t mine. It belongs to a friend.”

“The friend I saw you getting out of that hideous car with?” she asked. “The one who was covered in blood?”

“Where’s Henry? Maybe I can explain it to him.”

“He’s away.” Sasha glanced at the women at the end of the hall, tugged at the front of her dress. “On business. Just forget it. You can explain in the morning. I’m done with this.” She waved her hands around me like a magician summoning a rabbit out of a hat, indicating me, my life, my friends, my gopher, the dense cloud of problems I presented on the horizon of her neat, perfect world. “Just go.”

The troupe of women at the sitting room windows was bigger when I left. Expensively sculpted bodies against the gold interior lights. I stopped halfway down the driveway and looked back at them, waiting for them to flee into the house in embarrassment, but they didn’t. They just stared. I flipped them the bird, and all their mouths fell open at once. I smiled as I walked to my car.

JESSICA

Jessica tried to think of nice things that were yellow. Sunflowers. Lemon gelato. Beaches. But the stink of Wallert’s urine rose and rose from the stains she scrubbed at, a heady, feral smell, and all she could think of was his shriveled, limp penis in his chubby hand, the way the stream twisted as it poured out and pattered on the carpet like the footsteps of a small animal. His arc had been wide, so she shifted on her knees to a new spot, working the carpet cleaner into a pale-yellow foam, pushing the soaked cream fibers this way and that. The T-shirt she had tied around her nose and mouth