“Well, surely . . .” Kevin looked from one side to the other, as if the answer might be written in neon somewhere outside the windows. “We have to at least warn him. Don’t you want me to tell him about this when I get back . . . or can Doug come inside and tell him?”
Michelle eased the car to a halt behind the van. “I don’t think so, not tonight,” she said. “It would be too much of a risky thing to discuss in the house with Vanessa there. Besides, I’d really like to have more to go on than there is right now before bringing it up with Eric. In the meantime, it’s essential that he continue to act naturally.” She turned in the driver’s seat and looked back. “I know it’s a serious business, Kevin, but let’s try not to panic. After all, there’s no indication that anything’s likely to happen soon.”
Michelle left for her apartment shortly afterward. Kevin and Corfe, in the van, drove back to I-5 and turned south.
By this time, Kevin was feeling subdued. His reaction earlier had been more of a reflex. Only now was a real awareness of the truth beginning to seep through in diluted doses that his emotions could handle. It was like watching layers of scenery being carried off the stage at the end of the performance, progressively revealing the reality that had been there all along. If what Michelle was saying was right, it meant that the woman who had eaten meals with him, taken him on trips, helped plan his school schedule, shared his home—whom he had come to look to as the nearest he would ever have to a natural mother—had all the time, calculatingly, been part of a collusion that intended to kill his father and steal his—Kevin’s—inheritance. He suspected from the absence of any really violent reaction that the true enormity of it had not percolated through fully, even yet. Even so, he tried to detach a part of his mind to see if it could observe the rest and tell him how he felt about what had.
The most unbelievable part was not being able to do anything. This feeling of apparent helplessness was something he couldn’t accept. He felt like a rabbit in a cage with a snake, having no option but to let it pick its time. How could such a situation come about? With all the ritual and ceremony and rules and procedures that adults heaped upon the world, how could something as basic as being able to demonstrate that a murder was probably being planned not trigger some kind of preventive action automatically?
And until something did happen, was he supposed to magically have the insight to know what to say, how to deal with all the situations that might conceivably develop domestically in the house? He felt like a psychic dowser who was supposed to know how to avoid buried mines—except he’d never claimed to anyone that he was psychic.
Eric and Vanessa were both home when Kevin got back. He found Vanessa in the den, composing something on the computer screen. She was deep in thought, and didn’t become aware of him at once when he appeared in the passage outside the room. He stood, studying her through the open doorway, almost as if he should have expected to see some kind of alteration about her, some kind of visible change. But there were no horns poking through the dark hair, suddenly; no hump between her shoulders, fangs sprouting from her upper jaw. She looked, as always, calm, dispassionate, utterly composed and in control. Other words tumbled in his mind like clothes in a dryer: resolute; capable; indefatigable, undeflectable. A Terminator locked onto its goal.
She looked up suddenly. “Oh, Kevin! You’re back. I didn’t hear the van come in.”
“I walked up the driveway. Doug took the van on to his place to unload the stuff that we got. He’ll stop by in the morning and pick up his car.” He was conscious of her bright, uncannily reflective eyes interrogating him silently, giving him the spooky feeling that it was futile to think he could conceal anything that had transpired. She knew. It was written plainly. She could read everything straight out of his mind.