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Back We Were Killers Once Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty–one
  25. Twenty–two
  26. Twenty–three
  27. Twenty–four
  28. Twenty–five
  29. Twenty–six
  30. Twenty–seven
  31. Twenty–eight
  32. Twenty–nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty–one
  35. Thirty–two
  36. Thirty–three
  37. Thirty–four
  38. Thirty–five
  39. Thirty–six
  40. Thirty–seven
  41. Thirty–eight
  42. Thirty–nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty–one
  45. Forty–two
  46. Forty–three
  47. Forty–four
  48. Forty–five
  49. Forty–six
  50. Forty–seven
  51. Forty–eight
  52. Forty–nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty–one
  55. Fifty–two
  56. Fifty–three
  57. Fifty–four
  58. Fifty–five
  59. Fifty–six
  60. Fifty–seven
  61. Author’s Note
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. Also by Becky Masterman
  64. About the Author
  65. Newsletter Sign-up

Over Dad’s shoulder I can see Mom far off in an armchair in the living room. There are only five days remaining before Christmas, and the multicolored lights on the tree cast a glow on her. Mom is needlepointing a seat cover with a big cluster of purple grapes in the middle. The background is blue, what she would call Virgin Mary blue. Mom is systematically covering everything in the house that can be covered with needlepoint. I don’t want to grow up to be a needlepointer. It doesn’t seem to make Mom happy. She frowns most of the time. No, I want to grow up to be like Dad, drinking and laughing and doing dangerous and heroic things. I don’t know until years later that all Dad did was give out parking tickets and maybe get a cat out of a tree once in a while. He’d never even fired his gun except at the practice range.

Ken, Rory, and Mitch are all married, but our house is the only house they can come to and drink because the other wives won’t allow “that kind of talk” around their children. That’s not how things are run in his house, Dad always says. He says he “rules the roost.”

The talk is brutal, all right. Axe murders. Gang rapes. Decomposing corpses eaten by alligators in the Everglades. I’ve grown used to this kind of talk that other children aren’t privy to. These stories I’ve heard are no worse than the fairy tales I read, like where Cinderella’s sister cuts off her own toe to fit into the glass slipper and the blood dripping on the road gives her away.

I think tonight will be just more of that. I can feel the excitement build along with the beer bottles and cigarette butts in the middle of the kitchen table. My heart speeds up with the clinking of glass and the restrained intensity of the talk, even the parts I don’t understand. Go on, go on, I think. More.

The reason they’re so excited is that this mass murder has happened right in Florida, our own state. It was in a little town called Osprey, on the west coast of Florida near Sarasota. When they talk about it being so, so close, it gives me a nice little shiver. Like watching Caltiki the Immortal Monster before it goes too far and the liver thing dissolves the guy’s forearm down to the bone and that keeps me up all night.