It was exactly the wrong thing to say. When Peter responded, his voice was a roar. “Don’t tell me Lexi has nothing to do with this! Don’t you dare ! She has everything to do with this. You’re stealing her away from me, just like you stole your mother.”
He fired a single shot at the ceiling above Robbie’s head. Bits of plaster rained down onto the boy’s shoulders.
Adrenaline pumped through Robbie’s veins like rock music.
He’s not just drunk. He’s deranged. He’s going to shoot me.
Killing himself was one thing. Being killed, especially by his own father, was quite another. Robbie realized in that instant with searing clarity that he did not really want to die. He was fifteen years old. He wanted to live. All he had to do now was figure out how.
The window to the street was behind him. If he turned and ran, his father could put a bullet in his back. There was no escape. His only hope was to try to reason with him.
“Dad, I never stole Mom from you. She loved you. She loved us both.”
“Don’t you tell me how your mother felt about me! You know nothing.” Peter pointed the gun directly at Robbie’s chest. “Alex and I were fine until you came along.”
“Dad, please…”
The low whistle in Peter’s head was growing louder and louder, like a boiling kettle. He clutched his temples. The room swayed again.
I’m drunk. What the hell am I doing?
He glanced at the window, willing Alex to be there. He needed her advice, now more than ever. But she was gone.
“Daddy, stop it! Stop shouting!”
Lexi appeared in the doorway clutching her favorite soft toy, a stuffed white rabbit.
The noise in Peter’s head was unbearable.
He said: “It’s all right, sweetheart. Come here.”
Robbie watched his little sister take a trusting step toward the couch. Without thinking, Peter turned around to face Lexi. The gun was now pointing in her direction.
Robbie had to save Lexi. Instinct took over. He let out a primal, savage scream, running at his father like a maddened bull.
Peter glanced up. The expression on Robbie’s face was curiously frozen, like a videotape on pause. The fear was gone. It had been replaced by something else. Determination perhaps? Or hatred? Peter wasn’t sure.
He heard the housekeeper’s voice.
“No!”
Mrs. Carter had had a terrible night. She hadn’t slept a wink, lying awake next to her husband, Mike, tossing and turning with guilt. She should never have left Mr. Templeton alone with those kids. He was in no fit state to take care of them. By five o’clock, she could take it no longer. Leaving a snoring Mike in bed, she pulled on yesterday’s clothes without even taking a shower and hurried across town. As she slipped her key into the front door, she heard a loud bang. Heart pounding, she followed the raised voices in the direction of the study. She burst in just in time to see her employer aiming a shiny black pistol directly at his four-year-old daughter’s head.
Peter needed to think, but he couldn’t. The whistling in his head was so loud he wanted to cry. Suddenly he was crying. He opened his eyes and looked at Lexi’s face.
She’s so like Alex.
A second shot rang out.
The whistling stopped.
FIVE
MAX WEBSTER TOOK THE SHINY RED PACKAGE FROM HIS mother and turned it over excitedly in his hands.
It was heavy. Something solid. He decided it was probably not a toy, despite the childish wrapping paper and jauntily scribbled HAPPY BIRTHDAY in gold glitter across the top.
“What is it?”
Eve Blackwell smiled at her son, her eyes dancing with anticipation.
“Open it and find out.”
It was Max’s eighth birthday. A striking child, with a predatory, aquiline nose, ink-black eyes to match his hair, and cheekbones most fashion models would have killed for, there was something both feminine and adult about him. Max had none of the fat-cheeked innocence of his friends. Max was knowing. He was lean. He was wild. If other little boys were puppies, Max Webster was a cougar in their midst, as dangerous as he was beautiful.
Less than an hour ago, the Fifth Avenue penthouse Max shared with his parents had been crammed to bursting with fat-cheeked, eight-year-old puppies, all eager to ingratiate themselves with their famous classmate. The party had been Max’s father’s idea.
Keith Webster said: “The boy needs friends, Eve. He needs to socialize. It’s not normal for a kid his age to spend every minute of his free time with his mother.”
Eve did not object. She simply retired to her bedroom for the duration, locking the door. The party went ahead, and Max was inundated with presents: Transformers and Skalectrix and Hornby train sets and Action Men galore. Everybody ate a lot of cake and s’mores and drank Coke till it came shooting out of their noses in frothy black torrents. Keith Webster took pictures.
Afterward Keith Webster asked his son: “So, sport, d’you have a good time?” His face beamed with love and pride.
Max nodded. Sure, Dad. It was great.
Max waited for Keith Webster to leave. Sunday night was Keith’s regular softball game. He and some of the other surgeons from the hospital had gotten a team together to help relieve the stress of their life-and-death jobs. As soon as Max heard the click of the front door, he went in search of his mother.
“Are they gone?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“All of them?”
“Yes. It’s just us now. I’m sorry it took so long.”
Eve unlocked her bedroom door. Dressed in a chocolate silk kimono-style robe that fell open at the front to reveal matching lace underwear, she pulled her son close. At eight, Max was still a fairly short child. The top of his dark, gypsy head reached just above Eve’s navel. Pressing his cheek against her smooth, flat stomach, she felt him inhaling her scent, a mixture of Eve’s own feral smell and the Chanel perfume she had worn since girlhood.