Who Knows the Dark by Tere Michaels

Author:Tere Michaels [Michaels, Tere]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

Interlude

NOX IS thirteen. His mother is having a good month, and that is rapidly turning into a good two months, a thing almost unheard of these days. It means his father has started coming home for dinner twice a week, and Nox thinks his heart might explode from happiness.

His friends bitch and moan about family dinners and vacations, complaining about all the time they’re forced to spend with their parents. Nox never says anything—he’s not going to reveal the delight he feels when his father is at the breakfast table or his mother sits down with him to watch television at night.

He doesn’t know what it’s like to get too much parenting, only too little.

It’s summertime and gorgeous out. His father is wearing casual clothing so alien that Nox wants to take a picture—this is how Carson Boyet looks without a tie. His mother puts on a green dress, and when his father says, “Nat, you look gorgeous,” she blushes and giggles. They hold hands walking down the street, with Nox in tow.

Tonight they’ll eat and laugh, and Nox will see his parents kiss for the first time in so long he can’t remember the last time. They’ll sit on the stoop when they get home, eating frozen yogurt and talking about maybe taking a trip over the Christmas holidays. Skiing or maybe Europe or someplace tropical. Nox doesn’t care—he’ll gladly stay home if he can have this forever.

And if his father takes a phone call after they return to the house, a call that leaves him locked in his office until after midnight—that’s fine. It doesn’t mean that things can’t stay as wonderful as they’ve been.

The weekend is coming. They’ll spend time together then.

Two days later the UPS driver drops off thirty boxes as Nox is coming home from school. The man’s expression of sympathy is all too familiar. Hair dank and eyes dull, Natalie flits around the house in a nervous panic, wringing her hands and checking the stove for a gas leak five, ten, twenty times an hour.

Carson doesn’t come home for two days. Two weeks later, Nox wakes up to find his mother gone and his father packing a bag in the master bedroom.

And Nox is left alone again.

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