Chapter 63
Celeste
Wednesday
Celeste steps into Cody’s room. It’s not dark yet, but the curtains are closed already.
Actually, she realizes, they’ve probably been closed all day.
When he was small, she used to come in and open his curtains, but in recent years, he just closes them again, so she’s stopped bothering.
She’s stopped going into his room at all.
She’s not one of those mothers who picks up after her children.
If they have laundry or used glasses, they can bring them down themselves.
She hears other mothers talking about picking through their teens’ bedrooms for PE gear to wash and she quietly eyerolls.
Children need to learn independence. And she doesn’t spend all day at work to come home and do her children’s laundry.
Where did she go wrong, she wonders, gazing around the room.
Posters she doesn’t understand on the walls.
Not music posters like Nika’s nice Harry Styles ones.
Dark images that look sinister. Skulls and devils and death.
Posters of games or comics, maybe? Not very suitable ones, in her opinion.
On the desk, Cody’s gaming monitor blinks, the screensaver swirling and dipping.
His Xbox and laptop sit side by side. She opens the laptop, but it’s password protected.
Even if she knew the password, she probably wouldn’t look.
Snooping on her children’s devices has never been her thing.
She tells her friends it’s because she trusts them.
But in truth, she doesn’t want to know. If Celeste can’t see it, she can’t worry about it.
And Celeste has enough to worry about already.
She steps away from the desk to examine his bookshelves.
Mostly true crime, she sees now. She hadn’t known Cody was into that.
Some graphic novels. Some dog-eared HorrorLand books, but mostly true crime.
She slips a hand behind the top row of books and finds nothing but dust. She’ll have to have a word with the cleaner.
Behind the next row of books, her fingers wrap around something.
She pulls it out. A vape. Even though he’d promised after the last call from the school that he’d stop.
For goodness’ sake. She knows it’s not the worst thing he could be doing.
In fact, it probably isn’t the worst thing he’s doing.
But it annoys her that he’s been expressly forbidden and yet he keeps going.
Why don’t children today do what their parents tell them?
She’d have been given a whack of a ruler if she’d been caught smoking as a child.
And of course, now you’re not allowed to do that any more either.
She did when they were small. A light smack on the legs or the behind if they were misbehaving.
And surely everyone did. People just don’t admit it because it’s not politically correct.
She slips the vape in her trouser pocket and tries the third shelf.
Nothing there but dust and some other residue…
she pulls her hand out and sniffs. It’s barely there, but she can just about pick up a herbal smell she recognizes from her own college years and one particular housemate’s room.
Oh, Cody. It’s like he’s set out to be the stereotypical troublesome teen, just to get on her last nerve.
She turns to his bed, a mess of balled-up duvet and discarded clothes.
How can anyone leave a bed unmade? She reaches to straighten the duvet but stops.
There it is, glinting in the thin stream of sunlight that’s slipped through the crack in the curtains.
Its tip protruding from under his pillow.
Her missing knife. Now, what on earth is Cody doing with a knife in his bedroom?
A sound from downstairs stops her—the click of a door. Cody? Maybe he won’t come upstairs. She holds her breath, listening. At first, it’s quiet. Then comes the unmistakable creak of the third-last step at the top of the stairs. Too late.
The door opens and there’s Cody, glaring at her.
“What are you doing in my room?”
His tone is angry but, beneath the anger, Celeste hears the worry.
“I have every right to come in here. It’s my name on the deeds of this house, last time I checked.” She pulls the vape from her pocket. “What’s this doing here, more importantly?”
“I’m minding it for a friend.”
“Of course you are. Well, you can tell your friend I’m minding it now.”
“For god’s sake, I’m fifteen, not five. You are unbelievable.”
“Oh, you’re not five. So what happened to your knuckles? Am I going to get a call from someone’s mother?”
A strange expression crosses his face. “I hit my hand off a wall.”
“Sure. If I get a call about this, you’re out on your own. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life bailing you out of trouble.” She reaches to pick up the knife from under his pillow. “Why do you have this?”
His face changes again. The belligerence is entirely gone and there’s something hooded, dark and secret in his eyes. He doesn’t speak.
“I’m waiting.” As she says it, she wonders why she’s doing this. What does she want him to say? What if he’s planning to hurt someone? Good god, she’s not equipped for this. They’ll have to bring him to a therapist, they’ll have to—
“I needed to cut an apple.”
Relief floods her body. OK. An apple. That makes sense.
There are no apples here. There are no plates. No apple pips or cores. But it doesn’t matter. Because Cody has explained, and they don’t need a therapist.
“No food upstairs,” she says crisply.
“Whatever.”
Good god, he’s so annoying. “And stop sulking. You brought all this on yourself, you know. If you hadn’t locked that child out, you wouldn’t have lost the internship. The flap of the butterfly’s wings.”
“The message would have gone out anyway. I just wouldn’t have been mentioned,” he mutters under his breath.
Is he trying to blame her?
“Take some responsibility,” she snaps. “You locked that child out and these are the consequences.”
“I was fourteen, Mum. I had no idea what I was doing.” There’s something so plaintive in his eyes right now it stops her for a moment. Somewhere deep in there is the small boy she once held in her arms. She steps forward.
He steps back. “You shouldn’t have let me do the babysitting.” He’s sulky again, and she sees red.
“Oh, so that’s my fault too? You need to grow up, Cody. Why can’t you be more like your sister?”
“More like Nika? Ha. You’ll see. And when it’s over, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”