Page 22 of Bad Mother

“I’ll explain what you need to know to play this game, but I’m afraid the rest is up to you,” she continued.

A spiral of delight swirled within me. Father was no match for Mother, and he was about to learn that truth. I wondered if it would be a painful lesson.

I hoped it would be.

The knife still lay on the table in front of Mother, its shiny silver blade reflecting the overhead can light.

She dealt him an upturned card—a seven of diamonds—and did the same for herself. I reached down, tilting the two downturned cards just enough to see that he was holding a ten of spades and a four of diamonds. Nothing. He had nothing. That spiral quickened.

I looked at Mother, signaling her silently using our special language of minute facial movements and subtle eye flickers. She didn’t even appear to be looking at me, but I knew she was. She peeked at her cards and then picked up the exposed card—an ace of spades—and tapped it lightly on the table as though in consideration. “Here’s the tricky part, Roger. I don’t have any money because you’re a miserly tightwad who leaves me nothing extra.” She tapped the card again for a moment before her eyes lit up with sudden inspiration. I could tell the look was feigned, though. Mother was always two steps ahead of everyone else, though I had a special way of reading her. “How about we gamble with yourskin!”

Father made a muffled growling sound beneath his gag.

“His skin, Mother?”

“That’s right, Danny Boy.” She picked up the knife. “If I win, I get to put a hole in it. If he wins, I don’t.”

Father made a strange howling sound that we both ignored. I was beginning to understand the game she was playing, and though the thrill increased, so did a knot of anxiety.

I breathed through it. All I had to do was relax and leave this all up to Mother.

“Ante up, Roger,” Mother instructed calmly. Mother was bending the rules. In seven-card stud, players ante up before the hole cards are dealt. But Father didn’t know that, and I certainly wasn’t going to clue him in. Why would I? He had never played fair, and neither would I. Instead, I understood what Mother wanted of me, and so I turned the cards over, showinghis lack of anything of substance. A losing hand. Mother tsked, turning over her own hand. She had two queens and three twos, the highest possible hand.

“I win,” she announced, and then quick as a whip, she picked the knife up, raised her hand high, and stabbed it into my father’s breastbone before pulling it out swiftly on a wet sucking sound.

Beneath his gag, my father screamed, leaning his head back as far as possible and making the chair dance and clack loudly on the tile floor. I stared, mesmerized as blood gushed from his chest wound.I win.

“That’s for Jaxon,” I whispered.

My mother looked at me, a sweet smile on her lips, pride in her face. “That’s right, Danny Boy. That’s for Jaxon. And we’ve only just started. There are still so many hands to play.”

And with that, she began humming sweetly as she dealt another hand. As it turned out, my father was shit at seven-card stud. With each losing hand, his screams and howls turned more to whimpers, his head lolling on his neck as blood puddled on the floor beneath his chair, weeping from the holes in his skin. They were everywhere, those holes. On his arms and his neck. Over his stomach and across his chest.

“Should we allow him to die and put him out of his misery, Danny Boy?” Mother asked. She’d poured herself a glass of lemonade in the middle of a hand, and she took a long sip—appearing as cool as that frosty glass—as I considered her question. It seemed to me Father was mostly dead already. We certainly couldn’t call an ambulance for him, so what else could we do but finish him off and bury his body in thebackyard or maybe drive him to the dump and off-load him like the refuse he was? I suddenly felt so tired, and my head was pounding.

“It’s okay, Danny Boy,” my mother said. She had obviously noticed my fatigue, and she was understanding of it. Mother knew me as well as I knew myself. “You rest, my darling. Put your head down on the table and let me finish this.”

I did as Mother said. I always minded Mother.

Sienna finished first, and she covered her mouth with her hand.What if this is all true?Kat was done reading a moment later and did the same, looking over at Sienna. “She killed him. Just like we thought. That crazy bitch killed his father, whose name isRoger, by the way, not that that helps a lot at this point.”

Sienna bit at the inside of her cheek as she considered. “Is it possible that the fact Reva left her grandson alone for hours if not days at a time is this guy’s motive?” she asked, gesturing toward the note. “He might have found out somehow and... related to this kid? I realize Trevor was more neglected, while Danny Boy was physically abused, but to his mind, they might not be that different?”

“Or maybe he saw the neglect as a natural progression to abuse down the line,” Kat said, picking up Sienna’s musings effortlessly as she nodded.

“Okay,” Sienna went on, “so he decides to kill her before she can do her grandson any more damage. Then he realizes the kid might not be discovered for a while, so he takes him food.” She paused for a moment. “It makes some sense as a theory.”

“Yeah, I mean, think of all the things that could have happened to that little kid left alone like that,” Kat said. “The ways he could have been hurt. Or victimized. Between you and me, maybe he’s better off where he is. At least he has adult supervision now.”

“Between you and me,” Sienna repeated, worrying her lip. She understood the base need to do something to protect the unprotected when no one else would. She could relate to that sort of helplessness, and the thought was troubling.

“And it’s still just a theory anyway,” Kat said.

Sienna paused. Yes, and that was their job—totheorize. She’d related to other criminals before to one degree or another, and she was sure Kat had as well. Some criminals were pure evil, but most of them were not, and it was the humanity that still existed within them that made their job—and law enforcement in general—filled with so many moral dilemmas.

Relatingto aspects of certain crimes could be difficult and even emotionally crushing, but Sienna had to believe that that was what made her good at her job. She had an ability to put herself in a person’s shoes—for better or worse—and figure out who theywereso she could figure out what they’d done. And why.

“That theoretical motive might seem halfway understandable,” Sienna said, “but sane people don’t murder women. Sane people call the police when they have information regarding a child’s abuse or neglect.”

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