Tweaked by Katherine Holubitsky

Author:Katherine Holubitsky
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: JUV000000
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2008-03-31T17:00:00+00:00

NINE

The following morning, the stunned and terrified silence I’d come home to the night before has passed. Mom is angry. She starts in on me as soon as I walk into the kitchen. By the way she talks you’d think I’d been Chase’s accomplice, maybe even encouraged him to take off.

“You knew he was barely holding on. And to take him directly to those horrible men and then give him so much money! What did you think would happen? What was going through your head? Did you want him to get into trouble?”

I want to remind her that he was already in the worst kind of trouble there is and that I’d certainly played no part in that. But she is in no mood to listen to reason, so I simply say, “I was only trying to help.”

“Help! Help him get addicted again?”

Okay, that I couldn’t leave alone. “Do you really think that if it was stuck under his nose he would have turned it down?”

At that moment Dad walks into the room. “Arguing is not going to help,” he snaps.

Mom glares at him before turning back to the sink. It’s obvious that neither of them have slept. For that matter, neither have I. I’d drifted off once or twice only to wake up in the middle of a bad dream, soaked in sweat. Fully awake, I remembered the bad dream was all too true.

Dad is not going to work today. He’s going to meet with the police and talk to Chase’s lawyer. He wants to find out if there is any chance that the charge against Chase can be downgraded to manslaughter. If he’s convicted of manslaughter rather than murder, the amount of time he spends in prison could be substantially less.

Mom says that if ever there was a case that should be downgraded, it’s Chase’s.

“From our point of view, yes, but it might be hard to convince a jury. Richard Cross did die as a result of what Chase did. He didn’t take the man’s money, but because he’s a drug addict, to a jury it will appear that it was done during the commission of a crime.”

“But it wasn’t murder,” Mom insists. “He didn’t mean to do it. It was the drugs.”

“That’s no excuse!” argues Dad.

Mom is silent. Dad pours a cup of coffee. He sits at the table across from where I’m moving cereal around in a bowl.

“Look, a man is dead. You’re going to have to get it through your head that Chase is responsible. It doesn’t matter to the man’s family if Chase planned it, if he was on drugs, or if the devil himself handed him the weapon; the result is still the same to them.”

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