Page 25 of Not a Word

Ten

Reece

Diana was out the door the moment I pulled into the driveway and standing by the car as I got out. Her shoulder-length dark brown hair, which she normally kept pinned back, was falling across her face, a clue, as if I needed one, that she was anxious.

“He’s home,” she said, brushing her hair away from her eyes.

I sighed with relief. Her earlier call that Gage had not returned had had me on edge from the moment I’d left McCabe.

“Family room,” she said.

Even though I knew he was back, it was a relief to see his skateboard on the floor just inside the front door. I found him slouched on the couch, feet on the coffee table, remote in hand, scrolling through the channel guide, as if on a quest to find just the right show. The constantly changing feed seemed to have a hypnotic effect on him. Like a lot of boys his age, Gage was all arms and legs, as if his torso hadn’t had a chance yet to catch up with his growth spurts. If he’d been standing, we’d have been able to look at each other eye to eye.

“Hey,” I said, putting my butt down on the table, resting a hand on his ankles. He kept his focus on the TV, like I wasn’t there. “Give me that,” I said, prying the remote from his hand and hitting the off button. “Look at me.”

Slowly, he fixed his eyes on mine. They were red, but whatever crying he’d done appeared to be over.

“I’m sorry about your grandpa,” I said. “I know he meant the world to you. To all of us.”

Gage looked away. Diana stood in the doorway, arms folded, her shoulder up against the doorjamb.

“You’re going to start hearing some pretty ugly stuff about what happened. If there was a way to protect you from all of it, I would, but there just isn’t. It looks like my dad was seeing this other woman.”

I let that sink in for a moment before going on. Gage waited.

“Something happened between them, I don’t know what or how it all came together, but it seems your grandfather had a gun—I didn’t even know that—and he used it to shoot this woman.” I gave that a second, and then said, “And then your grandfather turned the gun on himself.”

Gage’s lips were pressed tightly together, but he managed to pry them apart and ask, “So Grandpa killed himself.”

“Yeah.”

“They found a note?”

“They did, actually, yeah.”

“Did you see it?”

I nodded. “The detective, she showed me a picture of it. We’re all going to be in shock for a while, trying to understand how this could happen.” I took a breath and added, “And what it’s going to do to your grandmother.”

He turned his head to look at me. “It’s all her fault.”

“I’m sorry?”

Gage shrugged and stared at the blank TV again.

“What are you talking about, it’s your grandma’s fault?”

He slowly shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I said that.”

I looked to Diana for the first time, saw the distress on her face, hoping I might catch a sign from her about how hard to push our son.

“Gage,” I said gently, “if there’s something you know that you’re not telling us, you need to share it.”

What was he suggesting? That my mother did this? Shot that woman, then murdered her own husband and made it look like suicide? That was beyond preposterous. My parents’ relationship was frosty, but I couldn’t imagine a scenario where she was involved. And even if Mom did have some distantly tangential role in what had happened, how would Gage be aware of it?

“I don’t know anything,” Gage said finally. “I just know she’s not a good person.”

“Gage, don’t say that,” Diana said.