Paul Curtin - Gray Snow

“That was a really bad one.”

“I know,” he said, almost as if he wasn’t listening.

Her son’s windpipe could have sealed shut, and he didn’t seem to care. She turned to go back upstairs, too exhausted for a fight, but the pill bottle on the floor caught her eye. She almost didn’t want to look. It had been a while since they had filled the prescription, but Aidan’s last seizure was two years ago. The doctors thought they might be finished.

“How many are left?” she asked.

He stopped and looked at her. The step stool wobbled. “Huh?”

“How many pills does Aidan have left?”

Sean paused. “Seven.”

“Seven?”

“Did you get into the reserves after dinner last night?”

“What?”

“Did you get into the reserves at all today?”

“No. I didn’t do anything—” she said. “Sean, what are you doing?”

There was a small clinking noise, and Sean said, “I got it.”

“Got what?”

He lowered himself from the stool and showed her a small box, a cord dangling from the back. But his fingertips were bleeding.

“Oh my Lord, Sean,” she said, rushing toward him and grabbing his wrists. “What did you do?”

He pulled away. “It’s just a cut. I needed to get a nut loosened.”

Her breathing hastened. “What’s going on?”

He held the device close to his chest. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

“Only if you are.”

He smirked, and then his expression deteriorated into a frown. “Someone’s taking food,” he whispered.

“Food?”

“Taking it.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve been fronting and facing the shelves almost every day. Last night, I couldn’t sleep so I came down here and pulled everything to the front of the shelf. When I came down after Aidan’s seizure—the black beans. The black beans.”

“What?”

“I made sure everything was fronted and faced. And now there’s a can missing,” he said, pointing.

There was a gap on the shelf.

“We need to do a full count again. We should have been doing it before.”

He sounded like he was beating himself up. The whole thing sounded crazy. They weren’t even close to the stage of meager rations, so it made no sense why someone would need more than they already got. It wasn’t as if there was suddenly an extra stomach to feed.

But he was going down a path. She could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. He used to have that tone before making a huge purchase he knew she would disapprove of, but that he insisted was vital. “We can count later, babe. Aidan—”

He walked toward the stairs. “We need to count now .”

“Aidan just had a seizure.”

“Elise, someone is taking our food,” he said. “The food we stocked. That we saved. Taking it like it doesn’t matter.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know who it is. And I can prove it.”

She didn’t have to guess who his prime suspect was. “Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know, but as soon as I watch this—”

“Watch what?”

Sean held up the device—the camera he had installed a few months back. Her brother was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a thief. Although he was stubborn and prideful. Always thought he knew best.

There it was: the feeling that exchanges rationality for panic. Sean had infected her with it, and now she could not see how Michael wasn’t the culprit. He had to be, though she had no evidence to support the accusation. “I don’t—”

He was already halfway up the stairs. She followed, each step a slow march toward something tragic. Like a dirge. She could hear each footstep. Her stomach knotted up. Don’t let it be Michael, she prayed. Please, let it be something else. Anything.

Sean disappeared to the second floor, and she paced around the kitchen. There was no doubt what would happen if it was Michael stealing. He was gone. Kicked out. Sean wouldn’t tolerate it. Any sliver of hope that she could convince him otherwise was quickly tossed aside.

Time itself stretched. She looked back to the doorway every few seconds, but her husband hadn’t come downstairs. Then Michael popped into the kitchen.

He looked back and forth. “Sean around?”

“You can’t be here.”

The harsh tone made him blink. He leaned his head back and widened his eyes. “What did I do now?”

“I think you know exactly what the problem is.”

“I really don’t.”

“Damn it, Michael. How am I supposed to defend you?”

“Defend me?”

“Stop playing dumb. Just admit it and we can try to move past it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

For a second, he had her fooled. His indignation seemed so genuine she was sure he was telling the truth. His eyes told something different. The lies always came to the surface.

Sean walked into the kitchen, a laptop under his arm, and stopped just inside the doorway. Michael looked up to him and then to his sister. “I’ll leave.”

“I think you should stay,” Sean said, opening the computer and hitting the power button.

He passed them and went into the dining room. Elise’s head whirled. Tears formed in her eyes. She had to stop herself from hugging her brother and simultaneously choking him. Michael watched Sean leave and then turned to her. “The hell’s going on?”

“Just admit you did it,” she said.

His lips curled inward, eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what this is—”

“Maybe this’ll refresh your memory,” Sean said from the other room.

Michael blew air out his nostrils and followed Sean. Elise stayed back for a few seconds, gripping at her chest.

“Did you forget about the camera in the reserves?” Sean said.

Elise inched into the dining room. Sean sat at the table, looking up at Michael. He had plugged the camera into the laptop, and a still screenshot of the footage was on the screen.

“Your camera?” Michael said.

“You’re taking food.”

He scoffed. “You kidding me?”

“Let’s take a look.” He typed, and the footage jumped back to around four a.m. on the video’s time stamp. “This is the last straw, I’m telling you. From now on, I’m having the camera forwarded to my phone.”

Elise’s eyes drifted from the screen and back, torn between curiosity and not wanting to know the truth. The images shuffled forward. The pictures jumped in ten-minute increments or where the camera was activated by its motion sensor. Her hand shook, and she covered her mouth. Couldn’t bear it. She retreated to the kitchen, resting her back against the fridge. She closed her eyes and waited.

A minute passed, her nerves soaring into overdrive. “That’s not right,” Sean muttered. She opened her eyes and turned her head toward the dining room. “What the hell?”

“Rewind it,” Michael said.

She dragged her feet into the room and saw them hunched over the computer, blocking her view of the screen as Sean slammed down on the arrow keys.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Holy shit,” Michael said.

“Guys, what is it?”

Sean leaned back in his chair, mouth hanging open. As Michael took a step back to show her the screen, Sean rotated the laptop toward her. The culprit was in the center of the frame. No need to guess who it was. It was clear.

She reached out for a chair to stabilize herself, hunched over like someone had punched her in the diaphragm.

ANDREW SWITCHED ON the weak flashlight, illuminating the space at the far end of the closet. The clothes and shoes had been pushed to the other end, leaving him modest room to stretch out. The closet opened with two sliding doors that ran along a metal track embedded in the carpet. They had jammed the glide on his side of the closet with a broken toothbrush. Only the other door would open. So if someone entered the room, Andrew could slip through a small door leading to Aidan’s closet, concealed by a dense layer of hanging clothes and shoes.