He would learn later that the police had arrested his father and the bank foreclosed on the house and all his belongings had been sold. He would learn later that when his dad got out, he left town.

Glen felt a deep loss. As great as losing his mother again. Everything that was Lorna Hamilton was gone. Her body. Her home. Her scent.

Glen left, a dark pit forming in his chest. A thick, growing, overwhelming rage that had only teased him in the past. Now it took over. Now it was part of him. Woven into his nerves like a snake, clutching, squeezing, suffocating him...

He planned to drive back to his aunt’s house, but he couldn’t, not now. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he had to hurt something. Someone. If not his father, someone else.

Glen never remembered how he got to Spokane, or why it was now dark, or why he was driving up and down the streets slowly, looking. He didn’t know why until he saw the drunk stumbling down, falling behind a dumpster.

Pathetic, drunk fool.

Just like his old man.

He stopped his car and got out. Approached the man. As he neared, he didn’t see the old bum with the red bulbous nose or the long, greasy gray hair. He saw Zachary Hamilton, the man who had sired him, the man who had scared his mother, the man who drank himself out of more jobs than Glen could count.

“Do you need a ride? The church down the street is offering beds for the night.”

“Go away,” the drunk slurred.

“Really, I don’t mind. I’m doing community service and want to help. It’s going to be ten degrees tonight. You’ll freeze to death. Literally.”

Maybe because he looked normal, he looked nice, the bum pulled himself up and staggered over to Glen’s car. Glen helped him into the back seat, where he lay down. Glen looked around. It was so late, so cold; no one had seen him. Still, Glen drove as far from town as possible. The drunk didn’t even notice. He was passed out.

He stopped in a park near the river. As soon as he opened the door and started to drag the bum from the back seat, the old man woke up.

“Stop that,” he mumbled.

He was weak. He pushed at Glen, but Glen held fast and pulled the man from the back of the car, dropping him unceremoniously to the ground.

The man grunted, pulled himself up. Swore at Glen, staggered away.

Glen watched him sit up against the closest tree, pulling his coat against the cold.

And all he could see was his father.

And the knife in his hand.

With a scream, Glen lunged toward the stranger, arm raised, and stabbed him in the chest. So deep that the hilt was buried. He wrestled the knife out of the man’s chest, warm blood coating his hand, his arm, spraying across his face.

“I hate you!” he screamed, and plunged the knife again into the body.