The Family Across the Street by Trope Nicole

Author:Trope, Nicole [Trope, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Thriller
ISBN: 9781800198265
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

15

There is too much blood. It turns my stomach. It’s dribbling out of her mouth and onto the towel George got for her and dripping onto her T-shirt, and truthfully, I’ve never liked the sight of blood. Especially not my own. It’s interesting watching the kids and how protective they are of her. Sophie is mostly afraid, but George wavers between being afraid and furious with me. Now he is watching me, his green eyes narrow and focused on my face. If looks could kill…

I have no idea why they thought I wouldn’t catch them trying to send a note to… well, there’s no one who would see something like that, and it wasn’t in the window long enough anyway. But still, they tried. You have to give them credit for trying, and I had to do what I had to do.

I didn’t think I had hit her that hard, but the gun was in my hand and it gave the blow some extra impact. My hand is hurting now. I rub my fist slowly, keeping the gun trained on the three of them.

I have so much to say, so many things to tell her. ‘Do you want to hear a story about when my father died?’ I ask.

‘I know that story,’ she says but the words are a little garbled because her mouth is filled with blood.

‘What?’

She spits some blood into the towel and I check myself for feelings of guilt or remorse but I am pretty sure I feel nothing. The ability to shut down my feelings about other people is probably something I inherited from my father. In the end the only person he really cared about was himself.

My father got worse and worse as the months went by after he lost his job. A lot of the time I came home from school and found him asleep on the sofa. But sometimes I came home and he would be awake and he would ask about my day. When he asked me what I had learned at school, I always told him, ‘Nothing.’

Usually, he let it go, but once his anger flared up out of nowhere and he leapt off the sofa and grabbed my shirt, pulling me towards him. ‘Now you listen to me, son, because I know what a harsh world it can be,’ he said. I was fifteen and tired of his shit so even though his hands were twisted in my school shirt, his breath too close to avoid, I rolled my eyes and sighed loudly. He twisted harder, his nails scratching my skin. ‘You think you’re so clever, don’t you?’ he spat and then he delivered a hard slap to my cheek. It wasn’t the first time he hit me. He liked hitting me. Sometimes it was hard enough to leave a slight bruise, but it was never hard enough to make me see him as anything other than pathetic. I wonder now if I had shown fear, real fear, if he would have felt better about himself.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.