Page 40 of The Dysfunctional Family's Guide to Murder
“Paying the premiums. Life insurance is a scam.”
“Dylan, has anyone ever told you you’re really unhelpful?”
“Constantly. But you make me really believe it. Where do you want to look, anyway? We’ve already searched the wardrobe. What else is there? Dressing table? Under the bed? I don’t suppose there’s a convenient hatch to a hidden attic?”
“Not that I know of.” The idea briefly excites me before I consider how unlikely it is that my grandad, who basically built this house, had the skill or enthusiasm to include a secret attic room and, even less plausibly, the self-restraint not to brag about it.
Dad’s step on the stairs sends Dylan to his hiding spot and I click off the bedside light and pull the blanket over me, wishing I’d thought to take off my shoes first. I lie still as the door opens and don’t breathe until it’s closed again. The hand on my shoulder nearly forces out a scream until I see Dylan’s face.
“Sorry,” he whispers, so quiet I have to lip-read. “How long do we wait?” He points at the wall separating Dad’s room from mine. I consider and hold up ten fingers. Dad’s probably already out—I once saw him fall asleep while he was still brushing his teeth.
So we give it ten minutes before creeping out and up the stairs, going so slowly we’re bordering on slo-mo. GG’s bedroom door opens without the ominous creak I’m braced for.
“Should we turn on the light?” Dylan whispers. The only light in the room is coming from a hole in the cardboard covering the window. I start to answer, but a noise makes us both go rigid. We’d look ridiculous if there was anyone up to see us. (Is there anyone up to see us?)
The noise is, as the horror movies so rarely say, not coming from inside the house. I’m not as quiet as I should be in my hurry to get to the window and put my eye to the hole in the flattened box taped where a sheet of glass should be.
The garden is dark but there’s a moon, and as my pupils do their thing, I can make out flower beds, the lemon tree, and…something moving? The longer I watch, the more I’m sure that the something moving very slowly across the grass is actually asomeoneand that theshoo-shoonoise that turned us into statues is the sound of their feet on the grass. I can’t make out more than a human-shaped blob.
“There’s someone there,” I whisper.
This is the moment I should fly down the stairs and investigate. I want to. Mostly. There’s a big part of me (we’re talking head, torso, and three out of four of my limbs) that wants to do exactly that. If I’m serious about figuring out what happened to GG, I need to get out there right now to see who’s taking an elevenp.m. stroll about the garden. The problem is there’s a small part of me (my left arm, say) that is just straight-up scared of what—or, let’s be real, who—I might find.
“I can’t see anyone,” Dylan whispers, bumping me out of the way to take my place.
“They’re going around the house toward the front door,” I say. “I’m going out there.” I consider grabbing the sewing scissors out of GG’s sewing basket, but realistically I’d probably trip down the stairs and impale myself on those tiny twin blades, and then everyone would think I was the Second Victim. Plus, Dad told me once that, statistically speaking, you’re more likely to have a weapon used against you than have a chance to use it yourself. It’s probably one of those made-up things parents say, like you’ll explode if you eat a sandwich before going swimming, but I’ve never quite managed to scrub it from my mental hard drive.
“I’ll come with you.”
We’re moving so fast on the stairs that I nearly go down the second flight headfirst when Dad’s bedroom door swings open and he stands there, rubbing at his face.
“Ruth?You’re up?”
“Uh, yeah.” There doesn’t seem much point in denying it.
Dylan collides with my back, knocking me down a stair and robbing me of any chance to pretend I’m going to the bathroom or getting a drink of water. I’m not entirely mad about it: How much easier to hand this problem to a grown-up?
“I saw someone outside in the garden,” I say quickly, getting to the point.
“Outside the house?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” I don’t mention that I saw them from GG’s window.
I’m braced for Dad’s skepticism, so I’m surprised when he takes me seriously.
“Okay. You two, go to Ruth’s room. I’m going to have a look.”
“I’ll come.”
“No, you won’t.”
Dad’s fast down the stairs, even in the dark. We keep up but only just.
“Stay inside,” he says to us once we’re downstairs in the kitchen, before closing the front door, very firmly, in our faces. Dylan puts his hand on the door handle, but it’s a question. I shake my head and we go into the living room instead, where a lump on the couch startles me before I remember it’s where our newest guest is sleeping. Rob’s snoring doesn’t falter as Dylan and I lean against the window to follow the bob and weave of Dad’s cell-phone light around the side of the house. This feels like a terrible idea, the moment in a scary movie when someone goes to investigate a weird sound in the basement or a strange light in the creepy-arse woods and it’s impossible to have sympathy for their imminent butchering because they’re too stupid to live.
