19. Cuckoo #3
“Absolutely tonight,” I say, readjusting the straps of my backpack. I have been guarding it closely. “More than any other. I want to do something.”
“Do something?” Crow echoes. “What does that mean?”
“Scare him,” I say. “Make him run for real. Make sure he doesn’t buy our house.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
“Trust me,” I say. “I’ve got it all planned out. No one’s got their phones on them?”
They shake their heads.
“Just what have you got planned?” Crow asks.
“We’ll all be laughing by the end of the night. Consider it a top secret mission.”
“A top secret mission?” Goldie groans, but they all play along.
It helps that they’re a bit tipsy.
“Let’s get him,” I whisper.
They don’t understand how seriously I’m taking this.
They laugh and chat and haven’t a care in the world as we make our way to our destination.
I lead us down the street and round to the back alley that cuts across to the garages behind the fancy town houses, and then we keep to side streets and under the cover of darkness.
Every now and then I comically shush them so they stay quiet.
When we reach the road across from the park, I pause.
I scan the area, but it’s empty. For now.
I look left and right again and then make a dash for the park, the others dutifully following.
It’s not a huge park, but it’s big enough.
Playground for children, field for playing football on or lying about in the sun, trees and a wooded area full of squirrels.
It’s like our own park, but everything feels better maintained.
Shinier. A running track covers the whole perimeter, including into the trees, and behind the park is the canal that runs along the west side, the bridge Hugo Fletcher likes to come to a rest upon above it.
Surprisingly rapid water, and surprisingly deep too.
I dropped a heavy rock in there last week and counted two full seconds before it hit the riverbed.
It’s peaceful. Especially at night. Especially in this wooded part, where the trees cover all angles.
I gather them all here and hide them behind a large bush.
I check my watch: We should be fine. My heart is hammering.
“What are we going to do?” Crow says. “Jump out on him and say, ‘Hey, leave Bishop’s House alone!’? I don’t think that’ll work somehow.”
“I don’t like it down here,” Wren whispers. Her hands are trembling. “It’s scary. Anyone could be lurking about. No one ever comes down this side, under the bridge.”
Starling chuckles. “We’re the only ones dumb enough to do that. It’s bloody freezing. And I think it’s going to rain soon.”
“Cuckoo?” Goldie presses.
I am too busy focusing on my watch to really take in what they are saying.
If all is right, it should be any minute now . . .
“Cuckoo!” Starling snaps, and I jerk to attention.
“Sorry!” I give my watch a final glance and lower my arm. “I promise you’re going to love it. It’s . . . the culmination, really, of everything we’ve done so far.”
“Culmination?”
But there is no time to answer. I hear it: footsteps, pounding on the path. The running track. A jogger, coming our way. About to run up to the bridge.
This is my moment. I reach in my backpack and grab what I need.
The footsteps are louder now.
I burst out of the bushes just as he is coming toward me and the steps to the bridge. He is wearing Lycra, both dark and luminous, and he slows to a stop as I approach.
The man who killed my mother.
Finally up close. Not sitting in court, behind a screen.
Not at his kitchen table talking to his glamorously boring wife, behind glass doors.
Not even running up ahead, breathless and real, nothing in between but distance.
No, he is right here, and I can see he is a man, with sweat and pores and a scar above his lip and another on his forehead, and I have to wonder if they came from when he murdered my mother.
If they are the tokens he carries of what happened.
And now this man thinks he can stroll into my life again, buy out the one thing that has given me genuine happiness in years, and not even live in it, but raze it to the ground?
“Help me,” I whisper. “You have to help me.”
“What?” he says, coming closer. He isn’t expecting me. He isn’t expecting anyone. He is not prepared.
“Please.” I’m able to work up a whimper.
He moves again, arms outstretched, closer still.
Ignorant of the danger he is in.
“Thank you,” I say. “I can reach you now.”
“What?”
I curl my fingers tighter around the knife I am holding, and by the time he sees it, my hand is raised high in the air and coming down on him.
I get him dead on in the chest, a wonderful hit, and then I take it out and stab him again.
More awkward this time, as he tries to twist and grab me, into his arm.
And then, into his side. It’s this last one that finally makes him fall, face forward, onto the path.
The others have come out of the bushes, faces paler than ghosts, mouths wide open.
Goldie is the only one able to speak. “Cuckoo, what have you done?”