Page 140 of Not a Word

“I mean, even Hitler’s mother loved him, right? Maybe she died before the Holocaust, but still.” He recalled one of Alicia’s examples. “Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother still had weekly phone calls with him when he was in prison, so she must have still loved him.”

“Who’s Jeffrey Dahmer?”

The point, Holden said, was even if he’d told on her, he wanted to believe she’d still love him. Sure, she’d be pissed, but there’d still be a mother-son bond.

“What about Grandpa?” Gage asked.

“Any time I’ve ever tried to talk to him, he shuts me down. We don’t talk about that night, he’d say. Ever. But he never, you know, said he’d disown me or anything. He didn’t threaten me.”

Over time, Alicia had upped her game. It wasn’t enough, she said, that there be a verbal showdown between Holden and his mother.

“You need to do something that ends this, once and for all.”

Gage was never present for those conversations, but Holden would tell him Alicia was pressuring him to do something he wasn’t comfortable with. “It’s not like I haven’t fantasized about, you know, having it out with Mom once and for all, but that’s just dark shit that happens in my head, not something I would do.”

Gage had a bad feeling about what Holden meant by those comments, but he didn’t believe Holden would actually harm his grandmother. If he’d thought Holden was actually going to kill her, he’d have broken his confidence, told his parents. What Gage didn’t know at the time was that Alicia continued to lean on his uncle. It was the only way, she’d said, he’d ever be free.

And slowly, Holden began to come around. He even thought it might be the only way he’d ever be free of Alicia.

I’ll do it if you get off my back.

He could see himself doing it. Walking up to his mother, pulling that trigger.

On that fateful morning, when he’d been up late the night before, getting high, he’d reached a decision.

This was the day.

He rose early. He got out the gun, made sure it was loaded. Maybe, he told himself, at the last minute, he wouldn’t actually shoot her, but boy oh boy would he scare the living shit out of her. That might be almost as good. She’d never forget how he’d stood up to her.

His last words to Gage that morning over the phone: “This is the day, man! This is it! It’s happening!”

Gage was scared.

He hopped on his skateboard and headed over to his grandparents’ house, pushing that board faster than it had ever gone before. He wanted to get there before Holden arrived, talk him out of whatever it was he was planning to do, warn his grandparents if he could.

Holden’s Honda was already there when Gage arrived.

He hopped off the board, ran up to the front door, and found it unlocked. Once inside, he called out: “Holden!”

“Gage!”

Not Holden’s voice, but his grandfather’s. Coming from upstairs.

“Gage, don’t come up!”

But Gage was up those steps two at a time and followed his grandfather’s voice to the master bedroom.

And came to an abrupt stop when he saw what was happening.

Brent Chartwell was sitting up in bed, propped on the headboard, sheets covering him to his waist and naked from there up. Beside him, a woman cowering under the covers, someone Gage had never seen before. She looked at him for a second, terrified, and then back at Holden, who was standing near the foot of the bed, on his father’s side, gun in hand.

He didn’t have it pointed directly at either his father or the woman, but nor was it down at his side.

“Who are you?” Holden said to the woman.

“Holden, please,” his father said, keeping his voice very calm. “You need to put that down, and then we can all have a talk and—”

“Who is she?” he asked, this time looking at his dad. “What the fuck is going on? Where’s Mom?”