Blue Vengeance Read Free Page B

but Danny refused to see him.
    His dog Russell sat with him most of the time. She got up now to investigate voices in the kitchen. Paul and Dot. Then in the living room. Just Paul. Danny heard no response. Now there were footsteps on the stairs.
    â€œHi.” Paul entered his room.
    â€œHi.” Danny continued to look out the window.
    â€œYour Aunt Dot said I could come up.”
    â€œSo what.”
    â€œI talked to your mum. I told her it was all my fault that day at Sydney I. Robinson’s.”
    â€œWhat did she say?”
    â€œNothing.”
    Danny had seen little of his mother. From time to time, he heard murmurs from the living room which was directly below his bedroom, so he figured she must be spending most of her time in there. She hadn’t been up to see him, but she rarely made the effort to climb the stairs even under normal circumstances. Her bedroom and the only bathroom were on the main floor.
    And he hadn’t ventured down to see her. They had passed each other in the downstairs hall at night when both of them needed the bathroom at the same time, she using a cane even for the few steps it took her to get there. All he felt when that happened was irritation that the timing was so unlucky. They hadn’t spoken; they could have been sleepwalking. He didn’t feel at all like her
dear lost boy
. Lost maybe, but for sure not dear.
    â€œDid your mum make you?” Danny said to Paul.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDid your mum make you come over and tell my mum that I had nothing to do with it?”
    Paul didn’t answer at first.
    â€œShe did, didn’t she?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œGet lost.”
    Paul stood in the doorway for a minute, then shrugged and took off down the stairs.
    Danny was glad Paul had owned up to his mother. But his anger didn’t go anywhere; it seethed inside of him. It had been this way since Cookie’s death, which he saw as murder, plain and simple. Somebody had to pay.
    He needed to kill someone. That was the thing he needed to do. If he took a life, a bad one, it could help to even out with what had happened to Cookie. It was worth a try.
    Dot came up to try and coax him to come down, now that Paul had come clean.
    â€œDoes Mum believe him?” said Danny. “Is she sorry?”
    â€œOf course she believes him, honey.”
    â€œShe’s not sorry though, is she?” he said, staring out the window.
    â€œWe can’t expect too much of her these days, pet.”

5
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    When Danny thought about killing someone, the first person who came to mind was his mother, but he pushed that thought aside. You couldn’t kill your mother. Somebody somewhere must have done it, but all the same. It seemed beyond his purpose of evening things out. He didn’t want to go overboard.
    He even thought of killing himself. When he went over in his head the last words Cookie had ever heard him speak he wanted to gouge out his own eyes and grind them into the dirt.
    The idea of killing Paul wasn’t unappealing, but that was for reasons totally unconnected to Cookie. And he didn’t want to hate him — he missed the day-to-day fooling around — but he didn’t know if it could ever go back to the way it was.
    Really, there was only one person. He let his mind circle her for a while, circle and then land.
    And he knew how he would do it.
    He rose from his chair.
    When he went downstairs, his mother was slouching against a counter in the kitchen, holding a mug of coffee. When she saw him, she dropped it on the floor. The mug didn’t break, but the dark liquid splashed up onto the white cupboards and onto her greying robe and it spread like river water over the faded green linoleum.
    Dot came running, and Danny kept walking.
    â€œWhere are you going?” she said, throwing a dishrag and a tea towel at the spill.
    He stopped on the landing. “To visit Cookie’s grave.”
    â€œWould you