Read Online A Hole in the Universe by Mary Mcgarry Morris - Free Book Online Page B

so scared she wet the bed? That she wasn’t supposed to have been there? Jerry Cox had said the house would be empty, that she and her husband were in New York for the weekend. But Jerry Cox had said a lot of things that night, that she was hot for him and always left the key in the garage for him to let himself in any time he wanted. He said the booze was in the back pantry, so the plan was to just help themselves and then be on their way. But then Jerry started opening drawers in the dark kitchen and feeling around inside cupboards for the money he said they owed him for yardwork. Probably upstairs, he said. She did that sometimes, left it in her underwear drawer for him, wrapped up in the silk panties she’d worn that day.
    It had all been said, all written down somewhere, delivered in testimony no one believed. Why should they? And even if they did, which word, fact, or detail would change a thing? No matter what he knew and remembered, the truth was ultimately meaningless. Like her grave marker, there remained only this rock-solid, irrefutable pyramid of facts: Suffocated or strangled, Janine Walters had died and would always be dead, no matter how awkward, scared, misled, lonely, or gullible the boy Gordon Loomis had been. It was murder! the prosecutor had cried. Murder! Nothing else. It was what it was.
    The front door flew open and the damp-haired children raced through the kitchen, calling for their mother. Gordon stood up as they burst onto the deck. “Come here, Jimmy, Annie,” Lisa said, gathering them close as if suddenly for comfort.
    With all three facing him, Gordon’s self-consciousness boiled to a rising panic as Lisa told them how lucky they were to have their wonderful uncle Gordon back home again and with them forever and ever.
    “Now you both go give him a great big hug and a kiss,” she said, nudging them along. Jimmy forced a smile. His younger sister glanced back at her mother. “You’ll have to bend down, Gordon,” Lisa said. “Otherwise they can’t reach you.”
    He bent forward, but sharing his discomfort, the children tilted their heads away from his clumsy embrace. He felt bad. He had positioned their pictures so that their beautiful faces were his first vision with the morning light into his cell and his last with sleep. Yet he was as much a stranger to them as they were to him.
    “Now you go sit in the corner and tell Uncle Gordon all about yourselves,” Lisa said on her way into the kitchen.
    Gordon and the children had the same pleading expressions as they watched her go. Though he already knew the answers from Lisa’s letters and visits, he asked Jimmy what grade he was in: Fourth. His teacher’s name: Mr. Kelly. Did he like school? Well, sometimes.
    “Sometimes he hates it,” Annie confided, careful to look at her brother and not her uncle.
    “No, I don’t!” Jimmy fixed her in his indignant stare. “I never hate school. I just don’t always like it the same, that’s all.”
    “Yes, you did! You said you hated it, and Mommy got really mad because we’re not supposed to say ‘hate.’ We’re not supposed to hate anything.”
    “You’re not?” Gordon said.
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because.” The little girl wet her lips and brushed the long dark hair from her face, conviction growing as she explained that hating was ugly and if you hated something, then you’d be ugly, too, like a creature or some kind of monster everybody was afraid of.
    Like your uncle, Gordon thought. His first night here, Dennis had leaped out of his chair when Jimmy pushed his sister out of his way.
    “She’s only six, that’s why she still believes in monsters,” Jimmy said, laughing.
    “Mom!” Annie called, running inside, leaving Gordon alone with the boy. He couldn’t think of a thing to say.
    “What was the jail like?” Jimmy asked.
    “Uh, big. It was big. There were a lot of . . . different parts to it.”
    “Did you ever try and break out? Like, saw through the bars