Legacy (Sociopath Series Book 2) by Lime Craven
Note
LEGACY begins a month after the SOCIOPATH’s epilogue, seven months after the pretty little bullet.
TWENTY-SIX YEARS AGO
Aeron
Aged six
Woodland near Ridgewood Reservoir, New York City
I am Jack in the box. Black box.
Black box is Mama’s car. I sit in the front, because shotgun! just like Daddy always says. See, Daddy drives like he plays piano, all shuffly and bumpity, so Mama never gives him the keys and he has to sit beside her. But not tonight.
Tonight, she made him lie in the trunk, and I got to sit up front.
I’ve never stayed up so late before. Sky is all bruised, mixed up like Play-Doh, and the screen of my Gameboy hangs in the dark like a green moon. Mama parked up by the trees a while ago and then took Daddy by the arms because he can’t walk no more.
Bag on his head. He can’t see, you know.
I was gonna sleep, I promise. But my bear slippers were still all sicky, and the smell was everywhere in my room, and even though my eyes were hurting, I couldn’t make them close. Thump, thump, thump inside me. Jack in the box in my body, thumping and hurting until he can come out.
Mama said we had to drive somewhere quiet. Somewhere with trees. I like trees, and driving in the nighttime is real cool, so I wasn’t sad about getting out of bed. But it’s cold now and Mama and her digger shovel have been gone a long time. I’m shivering under my itchy blanket, and soon, my Gameboy’s gonna run out of battery. The game sucks without the music on, but Mama made me promise to be quiet—even though I’m not always the bestest with promises, her eyes went as dark as the sky when she said it. So I’m being good. I can do that if I try real hard.
After Mama took Daddy into the forest, I rolled the window down. I like the little sounds—dirt falling off her digger shovel, leaves rustling, wheels on the road far away. We passed a lake on the way in, a huge one filled with black water, and the mud smell covers the sicky smell from my slippers. Trees are everywhere, like two hands closing in on Mama’s car. They make Jack thump harder. Now my chest hurts. Aches. Stings.
We’re going to leave Daddy here. A house is the wrong place for a man with a bag on his head; people will notice, and I’ll be glad when Mama calms down. One minute he was on the floor and she was just watching her shows; next minute, he’s in the trunk and she’s all fuck-clucking like a chicken, mad, so mad. They say crying is for babies but it’s for mamas too.
She cried when I was born. She tells me most days when we’re having toast or cookies. I tore her up from the inside out, she says, and I think, well, that’s also what she says about Daddy. Maybe it’s just what boys are meant to do. One day at school, we were doing spellings with Mrs. Heinneman, and we did tear. You know what? You can say that word two different ways to mean two different things, but not for Mama. To her, it’s like they mean the same.
A loud scrape comes from the trees, and then there’s Mama, walking slowly toward the car. She looks tired, dragging the digger shovel behind her so mud follows like a fat worm, and her dress and boots and jacket are covered in dirt. I hide my Gameboy under the blanket, but I don’t know why. She said I could play if I was quiet.
The first thing she says when she opens the car door is, “When were you sick on your Mr. Bears?” The smell makes her mouth twist up.
I shrug. “Bedtime.”
“Oh.” She puts the key in the ignition and the engine rumbles to life. “Oh.”
It’s like she’s staring at a mountain, far, far away.
“Aeron?”
I push my face into the itchy blanket; I don’t want her to see that Jack’s thumping made me cry. “Yeah, Mama?”