His legs had stopped moving on their own. He’d stood there frozen for a full minute, maybe two, unable to look away, as inch by fluffy brown inch, the freshly asphyxiated body disappeared into the snake’s glistening gullet.

He thought at that moment, staring at the dead bunny I know exactly how you feel.

Then his father had touched his arm, and he’d followed his dad out the exit into the white-hot blast of Georgia summer.

His father had watched him carefully for the rest of the day. Looking for signs of what? Psychosis? Impending nervous breakdown? Violent outbursts?

It didn’t happen. It never happened. Jason got through each day as he got through the day before, step by painful step, moment by painful moment, a physically scrawny, painfully undersized boy, armed only with his thousand-yard stare.

Until the day he turned eighteen and came into Rita’s inheritance. Had his parents planned him a party? Had Janie bought him a gift?

He’d never know. Because on the morning of Jason’s eighteenth birthday, he’d gone straight to the bank, cashed out two-point-three million dollars, and vanished.

He’d returned from the dead once before. He never planned on hurting his family that badly again.

Sandy was pregnant.

He should do something.

As thoughts went, Sandy’s pregnancy was a curious one. It floated right above him. Something he could state, something he could repeat, and yet the three words refused to sound like English.

Sandy was pregnant.

He should do something.

The police were gone. They had wrapped up their party a little after one A.M. The computer was gone. His iPod, Ree’s Leapster. Some boxes had disappeared from the basement as well, probably cartons of old software. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He’d signed the evidence logs where they had told him to sign, and none of it had made a bit of difference to him.

He wondered if the baby was his.

He would take Ree and run, he thought idly. There was a thin metal box up in the attic, tucked behind a thick piece of insulation, which contained two pieces of fake ID and approximately twenty-five thousand dollars in large bills. The pile of cash was surprisingly small, the metal lockbox no bigger than a hardcover novel. He knew the police couldn’t have discovered it during their search, because it was the kind of find that would have immediately engendered conversation.

He would climb the stairs to the attic, retrieve the box, slip it into his computer case. He would rouse Ree from her bed, shear her long brown curls, and top them with a red baseball cap. Throw on a pair of denim overalls and a blue polo shirt and she would make an excellent Charlie, traveling alone with her freshly shaved father.