Free Spitting Devil by Brian Freeman Page B

not supposed to touch?”
    The boy gulped nervously. “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, somebody broke it. I found the pieces at the bottom of the garbage bag.”
    “Not me.”
    Alison cocked her head in annoyance. “Evan, you remember what I always tell you? Mistakes are okay, but not lies.”
    “I’m not lying.” He stared at her with big, sincere eyes and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I think a spitting devil did it.”
    “What?”
    “A spitting devil.” Evan held up his comic book, where Alison saw a caricature of a red-skinned devil leering from the pages with his tongue lolling out of his mouth. “See, they make bad things happen in the night, and the only way you know they were there is because they spit blood onto the floor.”
    “Nice try,” Alison said.
    Evan pointed. “Look, there’s blood! See!”
    She studied her feet and realized that Evan was right. Tiny red drips of blood were dotted and smeared from the dining room across the kitchen floor. “That’s from my foot, young man,” she told him. “I cut myself on glass because someone broke my Russian tumbler and tried to hide it.”
    “Not me,” the boy repeated. “It was a spitting devil.”
    “We’ll talk about this more after school,” Alison told him. “Don’t think you’re off the hook.”
    She didn’t like Evan’s excuses, but she didn’t have the energy to challenge him now. This wasn’t the first time recently that she’d caught him lying. As the relationship between her and Michael had grown strained in the past three months, Evan had felt the tension in the house and begun acting out. He craved their attention, even if it came with blame and discipline.
    “Good morning,” her husband said from the doorway. He nearly filled with space with his tall frame.
    Alison tensed and didn’t reply.
    Michael Malville kissed the top of Evan’s head and tousled his son’s hair. She saw him out of the corner of her eye. He wore a sport coat and black turtleneck over gray slacks and polished dress shoes. It was his CEO uniform, classy but casual. When you owned the company, you chose the dress code. Michael had started his technology business a dozen years earlier, shortly after they were married, and he’d built it into one of the largest software development enterprises in the state. He worked with nerdy engineers who wore t-shirts and jeans, but he never allowed anyone to forget that he was the boss. You knew it by looking at him. Even now, when he’d laid off half his staff thanks to the recession, he never looked anything but perfect.
    Alison knew looks were deceiving. Looks hid all the stress, the pent-up anger, the arguments, the secrets. She missed the early days when they struggled with no money in a small apartment in the city. Wealth hadn’t given them peace of mind.
    “Morning,” Michael repeated as he stood next to her.
    “Yeah,” she murmured.
    “You sleep okay?”
    “Sure.”
    He put a hand on her shoulder, and she stiffened at his touch. Her rejection made him freeze. That was how it was between them now. Distant. Like strangers. She couldn’t bring herself to pretend anymore.
    Thirty miles.
    Michael picked up the empty carton from the counter. “No juice?”
    “Someone finished it and put it back.”
    He held up his hands defensively. “Not me.”
    “It was a spitting devil,” Evan called from the table.
    “Evan, be quiet,” Alison snapped. “Finish up and brush your teeth, so your father can drop you at school.”
    The boy groaned and pushed himself away from the table. He handed his dirty plate to his mother and shuffled out of the room. Alison put a steaming plate of eggs and bacon in front of her husband without saying a word. She turned to the sink and made as much noise as she could with the water and pans to cover the silence between them. It didn’t work. When she turned off the water and dried her hands, she realized that Michael was sitting at the table, his breakfast untouched,