Page 4 of Inflict

“Nope.” Her white teeth flashed at him in her smile. “You can walk me home.”

Connor nodded, and stepped off the path. Before he even knew which way to go, Evelyn had stuck her tiny, dirty hand in his, and pulled him in the direction she must have come from, wherever her house was beyond the trees. He’d been so surprised that she was holding his hand that he didn’t even pay attention to where they were going.

He decided he liked holding hands.

He’d only seen a few people do it.

All too soon, the trees began to thin, and the back of a house came into view, far beyond where the line of the forest ended. The pale-yellow siding was far more inviting than the old, worn brick of Miss Carol’s.

Evelyn let go of Connor’s hand before he was ready for her to. “Thanks!”

“Wait!”

Evelyn’s hair caught the rays of sunlight peeking through the edge of the trees as her head whipped around. In the light, her almost-white locks had a sheen of red. “Yeah?”

Connor didn’t know why he’d stopped the wee girl, and so he blurted out the first thing to come to his mind. “Wanna play tomorrow?”

Evelyn’s brow knitted together. “Not supposed—”

“To play with strangers, I know. But we’re not, remember?”

“Maybe.” She didn’t sound entirely sure. “Will you come back?”

“After lunch.”

Evelyn didn’t get a chance to reply to his promise, as a form darkened the side of her house just before a bellow of her name flew across the yard.

“Evelyn Marie!”

The form took another couple of steps forward, close enough for Connor to see that it was a familiar man he had seen before when he drove around in the backseat of his father’s old Cadillac. Sometimes, Sean would park the old boat of a car, leave Connor in the backseat playing with whatever toy he had brought along for the day, and disappear into a restaurant or wherever for a while.

Usually a long time.

But he had seen that man before—Boss, that was his name.

Or at least, that was what people called him.

Connor had only seen peeks of the man before—once, when he sat in a corner booth of a pub, drinking a pint of the black stuff, and another time at the barber’s shop, while a man shaved his face with careful hands.

“Evelyn!”

Connor jumped from the second shout, as it was much louder than the first.

“That’s my daddy,” she told him, “so I better go.”

Her father?

“Where’s your mammy?” Connor asked.

Evelyn stared blankly at him. “In Heaven.”

The answer took Connor by surprise.

“So is mine,” he whispered.

Or at least, that’s what Father Devin explained to him one Sunday afternoon, while his father did penance a few pews behind him. His father, on the other hand, had only ever said his mother was exactly where she belonged to be.

Whatever that meant.