Wolf at the Table by Adam Rapp

Author:Adam Rapp [RAPP, ADAM]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2024-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

AT HOME, DESPITE KNOWING it’ll likely be a few weeks before she receives another postcard, Ava nervously checks the mail. Her hands are cold, even colder than the tin of the mailbox. After all this time, why is she suddenly having such a physical reaction to a potential postcard? Something has shifted. The very possibility of it appearing in the mailbox feels like a portent. For many months what seemed to be a cruel prank, an intentionally unsolvable riddle, now feels all too real. Alec could change the rules of this perverse game at any time. But there is no postcard, only an electric bill, an events calendar from church, and a few department store flyers.

After she puts away the groceries and lays out everything she’ll need to prepare dinner, she calls Myra. Since Donald died, nearly a year ago now, they’ve been talking on the phone once a week, sometimes twice.

“How are your knees?” Myra asks.

“Oh, they’re fine,” Ava lies. “Today’s been surprisingly humid so they’re acting up a tiny bit more than usual, but I can manage.” She realizes to her surprise that she has twisted the phone cord around her left wrist. “How are things at the hospital?” she asks, unwinding the cord. She wants more than anything to bring up this postcard business. As she was carrying the groceries in from the car she promised herself that when she spoke with Myra she would immediately bring up the subject of Alec, but now she finds that she can’t.

Myra tells her that she’s been offered a job as the head nurse at a local boys’ prison. They would elevate her title to the coveted “state nurse” status, which would provide her with an improved salary and better medical benefits.

“How old are these boys?” Ava asks.

“Between ten and seventeen. Many of the older ones are already fully developed men but I’m told the guards there are very good. There are murderers and rapists,” Myra adds. “But the really bad offenders are kept away from the general population.”

Ten-year-olds raping and killing and committing arson, Ava thinks. Mere boys engaging in the atrocities of the Devil. She can’t help but imagine Alec running rampant throughout this prison. She sees him at fourteen, the same age as Timothy Dettbarn, taunting his forty-seven-year-old sister in a juvenile prison, calling out her name from the dark of his cell. Alec, the troubled boy who never aged, damned by an eternal pubescence.

“Don’t worry,” Myra says, as if sensing Ava’s unease. “I’ll be taking a six-week self-defense class.”

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