Read Online Not a Creature Was Stirring by Jane Haddam - Free Book Online

larger, than all the rest. He was stupefied when he reached the tree and found that pile belonged to him. It should have belonged to his father. Back on the stairs, he had assumed it had. His father was the Atlas of his world, part ogre and part god, unassailable and eternal. When Bobby thought of growing up, he saw himself getting taller and stronger year by year and his father getting taller and stronger still.
    He opened the three boxes at the top of the pile, wondering if he had so much because the things they’d bought him were cheap and inconsequential. They weren’t. He’d asked for a pair of air force binoculars, and he’d got them. He’d asked for a Greenwich gyroscope, and he’d got that, too. He looked across the room at his stocking, hanging from the mantel over the dead ashes of a cold fire and saw the pale blue envelope that should contain a notice saying five thousand dollars had been deposited in his trust account at the First National Bank. Just to make sure it did, he crossed the room and opened it up.
    He was stuffing the envelope back into the stocking when he heard the balcony door moving above him. By the time he managed to turn around, his father was coming down the balcony stairs. Bobby backed up a little. He wasn’t surprised at the ritual hatred in the old man’s eyes—he knew his father hated him; he’d always known it—but there was amusement there, too, and Daddy amused scared Bobby Hannaford to death.
    He’d taken a Hershey’s Kiss out of his stocking when he’d put the envelope back in. Now he put his fist around it and pumped until the chocolate turned to liquid.
    “Things,” Daddy said, stopping halfway down the stairs.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Things,” his father said. “That’s the only way I know you exist.”
    “That’s why I think you’re losing it,” Myra said. “You never listen to me anymore.”
    Bobby came to. He was sitting in the kitchen at Engine House, at some ungodly hour of the morning, looking through the window at a thick and furious fall of snow. He was forty-four.
    He caught sight of his papers laid out along the table and started to gather them up. “Sorry,” he said.
    “ Are you all right?” Myra said. “I thought you were comatose .”
    “I’m fine, Myra. I’m just a little tired.”
    “I suppose you are. Although what got you here at six o’clock in the morning, I don’t know.”
    Bobby let this pass—he always ended up letting a lot of things pass, with Myra—and put his calculator back in its slip case. He was feeling better. The torpor that had paralyzed him for most of the last twelve hours was gone. He could see everything he would have to do in the next week, and he could see himself doing it.
    He put his fist grip into the pocket of the jacket he had thrown over the back of his chair and said, “Teddy’s here, in case Anne Marie didn’t tell you. He called me last night—woke me up from a sound sleep—trying to find out something about Mother. I think he got fired.”
    “Really?” Myra didn’t sound interested. She was fussing with the Dripmaster, making the coffee Bobby had intended to make himself and then forgotten about.
    She unhinged the pitcher, carried it to the sink, and started filling it with water. “Listen,” she said, “can I tell you a secret? An absolute, dead dark, don’t tell anyone secret?”
    “Yours or somebody else’s?”
    “Don’t be nasty, Bobby. I’ve been very good to you, the last couple of years.”
    “I’m not being nasty, Myra. You’re just not very good at keeping secrets.”
    “I’ve kept yours .”
    Myra had kept his secret because it was also hers, and she had no more interest in landing in jail than he did. Bobby didn’t tell her that. He just watched her taking the pitcher back to the Dripmaster and pouring the water through the hole at the top.
    When she was done and the pitcher was back in place, she came to the kitchen table and took the seat across from