Finn by Matthew Olshan Read Free Book Online Page B

always drove to the cemetery to visit his grave. The grave was in an old family plot, a couple of hours away by car. Friends of theirs lived near the cemetery. After visiting the grave, there was always a little party with drinks in my Dad’s memory. It was the only day of the year when both of my grandparents drank cocktails. They spent the night at their friends’ house, so neither one would have to drive.
    I’ve never been to see the grave myself. I was too scared to go when it all happened, and since then, I’ve had some other chances but I always turned them down. It’s just not how I want to remember him.
    I couldn’t very well tell Mom that my grandparents had stopped visiting their son’s grave. Mom wouldn’t have believed me, because she knew better than anyone how devoted my grandparents were to Dad. I doubt I could have lied about it anyway, since it’s such an emotional topic for me.
    So Mom, Bobby, and I found ourselves parked outside my grandparents’ house again on Monday night, only this time there wasn’t a police car sitting out front. What’s more, all the streetlights on their block were out, which Bobby and I both took as a sign of luck, only opposite kinds.
    “Here’s how it’s going to work,” Mom said. “You’re going to take Bobby in with you. You’re going to turn off the alarm, and then you’re going to show him where the good stuff is.”
    “What good stuff?” I said.
    Mom told me there’d better be some good stuff. “If I think you’re holding out on us,” she said, “I’m going to go in there myself, and God help that house. You better pray your grandparents aren’t home when I come back and burn it to the ground.”
    Coming from anyone else, I wouldn’t have worried about the last part. Lots of people talk about hurting other people, especially when they’re angry, but most of the time it’s just talk. I knew that in her right mind Mom would never hurt my grandparents, not because she felt sentimental about them, which she didn’t, but because of the huge consequences if she got caught. But she was capable of almost anything when she was in one of her funks. I hadn’t seen any evidence of a funk, but that didn’t mean one wasn’t just around the corner.
    I finally told her about a few things that sounded pretty valuable, leaving out the stuff that my grandparents actually cared about. Mom wrote down what she wanted. She slapped Bobby with her little notepad every once in a while to make sure he was listening.
    As I was telling her about the silver and the crystal decanters and the china, an idea was beginning to form in my mind. It started with the feeling I had been having that my life was over. I had been cooped up in that airless bedroom for a whole week, except for the trip to scope out my grandparents’ house and this one to actually rob them. I had had plenty of time to remember how bad things used to be with my mother and to look forward to more of the same. Bobby was making an effort to be decent to me, but an effort from Bobby was worse than no effort at all. One night, lying there on the sweaty mattress, reading some teen magazine Bobby had bought for me, I had been surprised to hear a voice welling up inside me, suggesting very calmly that I might be better off dead. After the initial weirdness, I found that voice pretty persuasive.
    Mom and Bobby were bickering. Mom wanted to steal everything tonight. Bobby only wanted to steal things that my grandparents wouldn’t notice missing and come back for more some other night. His laziness was truly in a class by itself. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on a good memory, the way I taught myself when Mom and Dad were having one of their big fights. It didn’t work very well. The best I could do was reduce Mom and Bobby’s bickering to a distant buzzing. I couldn’t block it out completely because it was a dangerous buzzing, like the kind a wasp makes.
    That’s when I decided to kill