21. Neglecting Dust
Neglecting Dust
My eyes track everything, taking note of every scuff of paint, every family photo in need of dusting as I make my way toward the dated fridge, updated since I left but not before her parents did.
Not before the only people left to care for her abandoned her in this house all alone.
It’s loud, just a decibel or two over the acceptable hum of a home.
She probably doesn’t even notice; Audrey has gotten used to the decay.
I can fix that.
A scowl pulls down my features as I wrench the door to the fridge open, finding it nearly empty.
A few quick strides to the pantry find not much more than ingredients for spaghetti, oats, or cereal, canned foods not enjoyable on their own but meant to be tossed into an amalgamation of something vaguely consumable.
Gideon, Eleven Years Old, 1977
My shoes scuff along the hardwood as I let myself into Audrey’s house, her mom letting out a shocked gasp as she stirs something in a large pot on the stove.
It smells good, but something else doesn’t.
There’s something burnt, a subtle layer of smoke throughout the house, casting all its warm oranges and wood-paneled walls in a faded haze.
I wrinkle my nose, but step further inside.
Something heavy thuds behind me onto the porch.
“Well, shut the door, Gideon. You’ll let the heat out,” Mrs. Fisher chastises.
I just nod my head, stepping inside the bad-smelling room and shutting the door.
I don’t care if it stinks. I’m here to see Audrey; she’s been holed up inside with her Christmas presents, refusing to stop playing since she got them three days ago.
As much as I usually enjoy breaks from school, I find myself wanting to go back as quickly as possible just to have more of her time.
“She’s in her room,” she offers, turning back to her pot and effectively dismissing me, not commenting on why there seems to be a fire in the home.
I hear her dad cough from further back in the house, making my brows knit together.
The deeper I go down the hall, the worse the smell gets, a chill in the air that the entryway didn’t have.
When I make it to Audrey’s room, her dad is standing at an open window fanning it with a magazine as a teary-eyed Audrey sits on her bed.
The smoke burns my eyes, but I step in anyway, going straight to her.
Then I wait, knowing eventually someone will explain.
Just as she sniffles, opening up her mouth to speak, her dad finally notices me, interrupting her.
“Hey, Gid! Snag one of those magazines in the bathroom and help me fan this out. We had a bit of a mishap, but it’s alright, right Auds? Nothing to get worked up over, kiddo.”
I frown but do as I’m told, not taking my eyes off Audrey until I have to.
My jaw clenches as her lip wobbles, determined not to cry in front of him.
After I’ve gotten one of the Good Housekeeping magazines they keep in a rack by the toilet, I stalk back to the room, rounding her bed, finally seeing the darkened bits of hardwood and crusty black char of…
something. It gets clearer as I start fanning, finally spotting the burned remains of her blue Easy-Bake Oven on the porch outside.
My lips quirk up in an almost smile. Almost.
Her dad curses under his breath. “Damn thing went up in flames,” he explains, even though I didn’t ask.
That seems to break Audrey, a weird, strangled cry leaving her throat.
Like she’d rather choke than let it out.
I’ve never seen her do that before. It’s stupid, and it’s making me mad.
I stop fanning, my brows knitted together as I whirl on her, oddly incensed by the whole thing, my head buzzing. “Just cry if you want to cry.”
Her big hazel eyes turn from me to her dad as he slaps me on the back with his magazine, motioning for me to keep fanning out the smoke.
He lets out another chest-heavy cough before speaking.
“It’s okay to cry when it counts. Like if ya get hurt real bad or something.
But if you do it over every little thing, it doesn’t count for anything anymore. Right, Auds?”
She sniffles again, her chin wobbling so hard her teeth clank together, and that hot feeling in my chest rises. I turn to him, to say what, I’m not sure, when she speaks up. “I don’t need to cry, it’s just cold in here now.”
It’s a lie. A stupid lie, and the buzzing gets louder. They don’t take good care of Audrey. I decide quickly; I hate them for it.
Gideon, Present Day, 1994
The keychain jingles together as I jerk it up from the mess on the small coffee table, upsetting an empty used cup and stacks of unopened bills.
It takes me mere seconds to remove her house key and pocket it, checking on Audrey one last time, then I’m out the door, my boots crunching on gravel before they’re traded for pavement.
Awareness pricks my neck, pulling my attention back to the line of police.
Braylon emerges from the woods with his gaggle of officers that seem to defer to him, despite not being in any leadership position.
County will be little more than support crew now that the state police are taking the helm, with the newly local medical examiner’s help, of course.
I don’t lift my head fully until I do. My rimmed glasses slip on my nose, just a bit, my hand drawing up to push them back before offering him a wave. He returns it, but he watches.
My teeth score my inner cheek. Don’t be a problem, Braylon.
You could barely keep your breakfast down when you saw what the animals had done to his cock.
It would be unfortunate for such a tight-knit town to lose another beloved officer.
Having to embalm you would take too much of my time away from Audrey.
I roll my neck, another trained mannerism of mine.
Another one my father taught me years before he passed.
“You walk too rigid, Gideon. Loosen your shoulders. Blink more, fidget with your glasses, don’t stare, don’t smirk. One of these days you might meet someone who will take one look at you and know, they’ll know you’re different. We can’t afford that kind of attention.”
I get into my car, pretending to mess with something in the seat beside me before shutting the door, not too hard, not too soft.
I buckle my seatbelt, pretending not to be aware of his eyes on me.
I buckle it up because Gideon Bell is a law-abiding citizen.
A proud but unremarkable employee of Piedmont’s Medical Examiner’s Office who devotes what little of his free time to the local funeral homes as a freelance mortician, in honor of my late father, of course.
I’m good at my job, hardworking, but not good enough to stand out.
Friendly, but not overtly so. Quiet but not too quiet.
I’m just a regular guy, normal, innocuous.
I glance behind me in the rearview as I back out of my drive, my tires creaking on the road as I pull to a stop, waiting for one of the officers to wave me through.
It was the same for my dad after we left for Washington.
He took up an unremarkable job as a mortician in an unremarkable funeral home in a big city, and got me a job there too.
We started to blend. He made no real friends; nobody save for his coworkers and me showed up at his funeral.
A man once loved and adored, a staple in the community his family served for generations, died alone and forgotten, all because of me.
It’s not that I feel nothing when I think about it.
I just don’t suppose I feel what I should.
An officer finally gets around to letting me through, his coffee steaming in the cool air.
I offer him a friendly nod because that’s just what you’re supposed to do.
I don’t feel… good or excited, satisfied or even content about the end of my father’s life like I did when I killed my mother.
All I felt was… irritated that nobody showed up.
That a man who dedicated his life to providing closure and peace at the end of everyone else’s would go out utterly alone.
But there was nobody to call, nobody in the busy city of Piedmont to give a single flying fuck that Jason Bell had died peacefully in his sleep at the ripe age of seventy-five.
Nobody cared that he’d fallen asleep on his stomach and levity had settled in his face.
That the funeral home he worked for hadn’t color-corrected it quite right.
That man who prided himself on perfection had gone to the ground in some unremarkable cemetery behind a church he never attended, far away from the decomposed corpse of his wife.
Here we were, he and I doing the right things.
Doing what you’re supposed to do, but nobody else bothered.
Nobody cared that it was all my fault.
But Audrey would care. Her big, pretty eyes would be weepy and sad. She’d sniffle, cry, and try to comfort me despite me needing no comfort, so then I’d comfort her instead.
Audrey is perfect.
She’s perfect and she’s mine.
If that means my father died without purpose and nothing he ever did mattered one single fucking bit, well that’s just fine.