Free Spitting Devil by Brian Freeman Page A

was off-limits to anyone but him. Her husband claimed that Evan had been playing with his computer, but she suspected that Michael was more afraid of what she would find hidden in his personal files.
    Pictures. Photographs.
    She put her ear to the door, and she could hear him lightly snoring. He’d been sleeping down here, away from her, for several weeks.
    Alison was relieved that he was still in the house. She told herself that her paranoia was just a dream, like the ants. That was how it worked when you suspected something you didn’t dare believe. You used every opportunity, every excuse, to tell yourself that you were wrong.
    Michael was not a monster.
    Even so, Alison knew that his being here now, in the morning, meant nothing. She’d slept most of the night, and in those hours, anything could have happened. She had to know the truth. She backtracked to the foyer, where the vaulted ceiling loomed over the entryway. Michael kept his keys in a ceramic bowl by the door, and she scooped them into her hand. She threw open the double front doors and ran outside. They lived in the country. She heard morning birds squawking in the spruce trees beyond the field. The fieldstones on their walkway were freezing. She could see her breath.
    Michael’s black sedan was parked outside the garage. There were needles of frost on the windows. She put her palm on the hood, and it was cold, but in the twenty-degree lows overnight, cars cooled down almost as soon as the engine stopped. She opened the driver’s door. The car was never locked; there was no need for locks here, in the middle of nowhere.
    She remembered the exact number. She’d slipped outside to memorize the odometer before she went to bed. It was her lifeline.
    Alison sat inside, wracked with shivers so severe she could barely hold the key and slide it into the ignition. She turned the key just far enough to jolt the electrical systems. The dashboard blinked to life in red and white lights. She leaned forward over the steering wheel to study the mileage, and her hand slapped over her mouth in horror. She read the number three times to be certain she wasn’t wrong.
    The odometer had changed.
    Thirty miles. He’d driven thirty miles overnight.
*
     
    Evan sat at the kitchen table, slurping cereal from his spoon and turning the pages in a comic book. Alison heard the shower pipes overhead and knew her husband was awake. She was dressed smartly for work and wore an apron over her pink blouse to avoid spatter from the bacon in the frying pan. Michael liked a hot breakfast, and she still cooked it for him each morning the way she had for years, as if nothing had changed between them.
    “Can I have some orange juice?” Evan asked.
    Alison glanced at the boy. Her grim face softened. “Sure.”
    She opened the door of the side-by-side refrigerator and grabbed a carton of juice from the top shelf, but when she shook it, she realized the carton was empty. She blew out her breath in frustration. It was a stupid little thing, but she couldn’t handle the little things today.
    “Sorry, kiddo, no juice.”
    “Oh.”
    “Did you finish it and not tell me?”
    “No.”
    Alison gave her son the mock evil eye. “Because when you finish it and put the carton back, I don’t know to buy more, right? So you don’t get any juice that way.”
    “I didn’t do it,” Evan insisted.
    “Whatever you say,” Alison replied, but she was sure that Evan was the culprit. She returned to the bacon, which was blackening rapidly from crispy to burned. She pulled the pan off the range, but the charred odor was strong. She was upset because she hadn’t had time to cook breakfast before getting dressed. Now her pants suit and her long red hair would smell of bacon fat, not her subtle French perfume.
    “Is there anything else you want to tell me about?” she asked her son.
    “Like what?”
    “Like what happened to the crystal glass in the dining room? The one that was in the bureau you’re