Son of Destruction

27




Steffy


And how she brought it off? Timing. When Mom went into the kitchen, she hissed, ‘Don’t tell Mom. I found something scary at the house.’

She didn’t have to say which house. He dropped that ancient yearbook he came with. Now all she has to do is make up some story, right?

But Dan’s all over it, like white on rice. ‘OK. What did you find in the house?’

‘Yeah, well. Whatever. It’s hard to explain. You kind of have to see it.’

‘Letters? Papers? Skeleton? Disembodied corpse?’

It’s just something she made up to spring him. ‘You mean, like, ghost? Not really.’ She fishes, but comes up empty. ‘It’s a lot and a lot stranger.’

‘Explain strange.’

Come up with something, quick. All she hears in her head is, duh. Duh. Duh. Only three more blocks. Duh! ‘So, where did you get that old Swordfish?’

‘Yard sale!’

Did he just turn red? Her tone says, Gotcha. ‘Yeah, right.’

Dan counters with, ‘So, what’s this, like, scary thing you found at the Archambault house.’

And Steffy knuckles. ‘Oh, that. That was just a story to get you out of Mom’s clutches. Like, you were desperate. Look, we’re here.’ Carter is here too. Her heart leaps up at the sight of his car. She jumps out.

He says, ‘OK then.’

‘Are you coming or what?’

‘Can’t. Researching down at the Star.’

‘OK. The something strange was just a story, but it wasn’t,’ she says heavily. ‘There’s. Um. Something in the attic that you have to see.’ That, at least, is the truth. She needs to get him in there long enough to mess Carter up a little bit, you know, to get him back for the hickey Jen plastered on him like a fruit label, then he can go. She leans into the car, wheedling. ‘Really.’

‘Look, you got your ride. If you’ll just close the door?’

‘Come on, it won’t take long.’ When he greets this with an apologetic shrug, she comes clean. ‘OK, I need a favor. It’s my boyfriend? It’ll only take a minute, just enough to make him jealous, please?’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘It’s important. You don’t even have to talk to him.’

He cuts the motor. ‘OK.’

It’s kind of trippy, going into their place with a gorgeous man, knowing that Carter, who might actually be watching from the attic window, will hear them talking on the stairs. But of course they aren’t talking. Dan just follows politely so she is rummaging again, weighing setup lines. Think of something to say that will make him answer, Stef, think fast. She blurts, ‘I told him you were my boyfriend!’

‘What?’

‘Carter. Carter Bellinger. It’s a long story,’ she says, thinking: Take that, perfidious Jen.

‘I bet.’ He isn’t listening, he’s inspecting the scarred wallpaper as they climb the stairs, as though what he needs is written there.

‘So if you wouldn’t mind . . .’

‘What, holding your hand?’

‘Playing like you care.’

But he is running his fingers over initials carved in the old newel post with a weird, visionary squint.

‘Come on!’

Opening the attic door Steffy says, to keep the conversation going, ‘Mom told me you have, um, family down here?’

‘Sort of. Maybe. I don’t know.’

‘Where else would you get a copy of the world’s oldest Swordfish? I mean, f*ck, it’s from my mother’s year.’

And for the first time since they left her house, her new guy smiles. ‘It was my mother’s year too. Her name was Lucy,’ he adds, as though she’ll recognize it and start to talk. ‘Lucy Carteret?’

‘Awesome!’ she says as her head clears the top of the attic stairs. We’re practically the same age. This makes her so happy that she laughs. She’s trying hard to make this sound like a party. ‘That is sooo cool!’

What follows is everything Steffy hoped and more. ‘Babe!’ Carter is energized by the unfamiliar voice. He greets her with a studly hug. At the same time he is craning over her shoulder to see who . . .

‘This is my friend Danny,’ she says carelessly, as Dan Carteret emerges from the stairwell. ‘Danny, Carter. Carter, Dan.’

Nicely – he really is a good guy! – her friend slips a possessive arm around her. ‘Any friend of Steffy’s . . .’

Carter gives him a diffident, ‘Hey.’

‘He’s a reporter. How cool is that?’

‘Really.’ Not a question. Period. Carter is trying way too hard to sound unimpressed. ‘And you brought him up here because . . .’

Steffy says, all, everybody-knows-this, ‘You mean you don’t know what happened here? When you get home, Google Lorna Archambault. She burned up right here in this house.’

‘No shit.’

‘Yeah, shit. Dan’s doing a story about it, for his paper? It’s . . .’

But her trophy is too absorbed to pick up on his cue. Instead he spooks around the attic, peering into gables, turning over trash with his toe, running a hand over the dressmaker’s shape which might in fact be dead old Lorna’s shape, poking at defunct Venetian blinds. When he does speak, he says nothing that Steffy expects. Instead he pulls out a tired old picture, which he hands to Steffy first. ‘I can’t stay, but, hey. Do you know these guys?’

More than anything, Steffy wants to help him, but she doesn’t know these guys. She hands off the snapshot to Carter, who’s so close that her flank twitches, from her armpit all the way down. His warm breath swirls around in her ear; she wants to finish this fast so Dan will leave. Then she’ll do whatever she has to with Carter, to get him back from Jen.

But the least likely person to recognize somebody in Dan’s crap snapshot turns out to know. Carter yips like a pirate with a treasure map. ‘Well, yeah!’

‘No shit!’

‘Yeah, shit. There’s one a lot like it tacked up at my dad’s fishing shack? Except my dad isn’t driving in that one, go figure. I mean, it’s his Jeep. That’s Millicent Von Harten’s father in the back with Mr Coleman and his twin brother, the one that died in the wreck? And the guys hanging off the sides? Oh hell, I don’t know who this one is, that has all the red hair? But the one on the driver’s side is definitely Mr Kalen, you can tell by the unibrow.’