Page 3 of The Sun
Earlier that year, I had discovered that if I pressed my ear to the wall that separated the two bedrooms, I could eavesdrop. And oh, the miraculous things I learned: things about their church group and Grandma Alveenie’s health... And that Elias had twin brothers—“God only knew where they were,” Momma said.
His dad was in prison, and his mother had disappeared.
It was two months before anyone called CPS, and at the time of Elias’ arrival in our home, his mother had yet to be located. Daddy suggested she may be dead. Mother “wouldn’t hear of it.” Whatever that meant.
That night though, as I held my ear to the cool wall, what I overheard sent a shudder of fear through my veins.
“I found out what his father’s in prison for,” Daddy said, his voice so low and hushed I thought maybe, just maybe, they’d caught on to my eavesdropping.
“David. I thought they kept that sealed.”
“They do…”
“Drugs? Stealing?” Mother asked.
“Murder.”
“What?” Momma’s voice shook. “David! He killed someone?”
Then silence.
The kind of silence that made me lean against the wall harder, cupping my hand around my ear. My stupid heart banged around in my chest so loudly that it clanged in my ears, which didn’t help my spy work, at all.
The uneasy quiet dragged on for what seemed like thirty hours. Finally, I heard Momma sigh. “Why wouldn’t the social worker have told us that?”
“Would it have mattered, Clara?”
“I don’t know.” Then the door to their bathroom creaked, and all I could hear were the sounds of muffled voices.
Murder.
I moved away from the wall, rolling that word over in my head.
Elias’ dad killed someone.
A sudden, artic chill wrapped around me, and I sank underneath my pink, fairy covers, staring through the dark at my closed bedroom door. Fathers were supposed to coach t-ball and soccer, take their little boys fishing. Not kill people.
I wondered if Elias knew, and if he did, I contemplated whether that made him a bad person, too. I was curious about a lot of things regarding Elias Black, and my mind traveled down the rabbit hole of my imagination, wondering where he had lived before he came here. Possibly a place similar to an RL Stine book. Dark and dreary, covered in dust and spiders. The house would be small and cramped and located in the middle of an overgrown field with coyotes prowling the grounds.
I thought about Elias and his messy hair and his lost brothers until the unsettled feeling overtook me and I found myself with my covers over my face, whispering the Lord’s Prayer before I finally, somehow, drifted into an uneasy sleep.
My dreams that night were plagued by coyotes and villains, and I awoke with a racing heart and sweaty palms.
I sat straight up in bed, then froze. Someone was hunched over in front of my closet door.
My nightlight glowed just enough to make out Elias’ messy, brown hair and Transformer pajamas, which was the only reason I swallowed the scream that sat in the back of my throat.
His head lay crooked over his shoulder, his wiry body bent over his knees.
Gnawing at my lip, I swung my legs over the edge of my bed, wanting nothing more than to wake Elias and ask him what he was doing. But the longer I stared at him, the more I thought about the terrible things I’d heard through my wall earlier tonight—dreams of wild animals and mean men—and I was too afraid to wake the boy who wouldn’t talk to me.
I grabbed my pink stuff animal, Rattle Bear, the beads inside her belly shaking as I tiptoed into the hallway and then to my parent’s door. I intended to climb into their bed and snuggle safely between them, but just as I reached for their knob, something in my room creaked.
I waited. Curiosity tugged and tugged at me until I found myself scooting along the wall. I crept toward my room. When I peeked through the cracked door, Elias was frantically throwing the covers off my bed.
“Sunny?” he whispered, followed by, “Shit. Sunny?”
I’d never heard a little boy cuss before, and for some reason, it excited me.
