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Back 3 a.m.
Chapters (67)
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  67. 3:46 a.m.

“Oh,” he says with a laugh. “I put them in the shed.”

Right, the shed.

“Yeah, with the rest of your mother’s stuff.”

:04

“What?” I shout, loud enough that Murdock lifts his head off the linoleum in the kitchen.

“I put the boxes in the shed with the rest of your mom’s stuff,” he repeats.

“Yes, I heard you. What I don’t understand is why you are just telling me this now. You know I’m searching for her, you’ve known I’ve been searching since that whole black site thing. How could you keep this from me?”

“I didn’t think—”

“What? You didn’t think I would want to know about a shed full of my mom’s stuff? What about when I came to you last year asking about her? How could an entire shed of her stuff slip your mind?”

He stands up from the table, his face growing flush.

“I didn’t want to poison you again. You don’t have enough time in your life to be mad at your mother.”

“You don’t get to decide what I have time for, okay? If I want to spend all sixty minutes of my day for the rest of my fucking life pissed off at my mom, then that is my right.”

I take a deep breath.

Lassie has wandered over and glares up at me.

Meow.

I don’t want to chill out.

“Do you know what that woman did to me? She caused my condition. She fucking experimented on me.”

I am too furious to continue.

“Get me a flashlight.”

My dad’s eyes are moist. I don’t care.

“Go get me a flashlight,” I order.

He shakes his head, obviously frazzled, then opens a couple drawers until he finds a flashlight.

He hands it to me and says, “I just—”

I shake my head and he stops.

I pick up Lassie and flick on the flashlight, then open the sliding glass door that leads to the backyard.

Lassie climbs on my shoulder and gives my ear a lick. Somehow it calms me, and by the time I’m halfway to the clapboard shed in the back corner of the yard, it no longer feels like my temples are going to implode.

There is no lock and I pull the door open.

It creaks, and a musty wave of air flows over me.

My father must have moved the boxes weeks, if not months, ago.

I cough, then take two steps into the fifteen foot by ten foot space and splay the flashlight across the contents. Lawnmower, weed wacker, hedger, and various other grounds-keeping implements, which have long ago retired from active duty.

Something skitters across the ground and out the door of the shed.

Meow.

“No, I don’t think that was a possum.”

Meow.

“No, I don’t think it was a raccoon either.”