I went to explore the bedrooms a bit more. Down a hallway that came off of the living room, there were five doors—two huge bathrooms and three bedrooms. One of the bedrooms, the one I had taken the clothes from, was clearly the parents’ bedroom. It was the biggest and had a high, king-sized mattress with a beautiful carved oak headboard. The nightstands on either side of the bed matched the headboard, and so did the huge dresser off to the side of the room. I pulled open drawers. It had been days since I’d had a fresh pair of underwear, and the thought of one trumped the disgust I felt at wearing some goodbreed’s undergarments. I found the underwear drawer before long, and after I pulled out some comfortable cotton pairs, I reached in and took out the warmest, thickest socks I could find. They looked like they were made of wool. I had never owned a pair of socks like that in my entire life.

While I was pulling socks out of the drawer, my hand hit something hard and cold. I pulled whatever it was out of the drawer. There was a gun in my hand. A no-joke Beretta handgun. I looked at it for a minute in the light streaming in from between the heavy curtains. It glinted dully in the light. When I was a kid, my dad took me to a shooting range a couple of times, just because he said I should know how to shoot if I ever had to. He never said why he thought I’d have to, just that I should know. If only I’d had that gun out on that ori Peter’s boat.

I reached back in my brain to remember everything I could about shooting. Stretching my arm out, I aimed the gun at the wall. The feeling of holding it out like that made my arm shake. Making sure the safety was on, I put it down on the bed.

Closing the door, I unbuttoned my pants and slipped them down. I stepped out of them and stood there in my underwear. They were ripped along one side, near the waistband. As I slipped them off, I saw bloodstains in the crotch. I took them off and shoved them in the back corner of the drawer. I pulled the new ones on. I noticed that my breathing was heavy and my heart was beating fast. The boat came back to me then, and I pushed it out of my head by force. I thought of where I was, of all the nice things, of how I was going to keep the boy and my grandmother and Jaden safe forever. I pulled my pants back on and slipped the gun into the waistband.