Free The Explanation for Everything by Lauren Grodstein Page B

He felt sweaty. This was the part where he always felt sweaty. And someone was breathing behind him.
    â€œAre you working on your grant stuff, Dad?”
    â€œI thought you were asleep.”
    â€œI was thirsty.” Belle was standing on her tiptoes, searching through the cabinets for the cup she liked, the oversized purple one. She was wearing one of his old T-shirts to sleep in, which hung down to her knees and rode low across her shoulders. He didn’t know whether she wore the shirt because she liked it or because he’d neglected to buy her pajamas. He often didn’t know what he was supposed to buy them until they’d gone without for too long.
    â€œYou shouldn’t drink too much before you go to bed,” he said mildly, watching Belle fill her cup with milk.
    â€œI know,” she said. She sat down at the table across from him, pushed her cup across the table. “You want some?”
    â€œSure.”
    Belle too was starting to change—she still had that tubby belly but she was starting to show the collarbones of an older girl, thin and sharp. “Who’s Mr. McGee?” she said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œOn your computer,” she said. Jesus Christ, her eyes were good. And she could read! Of course she could read, she was eight years old. She read all the time. She had stacks of books in her room.
    â€œIs he a friend of yours?”
    â€œYes,” Andy said.
    â€œWhy do you call him Mr. McGee if he’s your friend?”
    â€œI don’t know his first name,” Andy lied.
    â€œYou don’t know it?”
    Andy had never told his daughters the real reason he went, alone, to Okeechobee every few years. He told them it was a conference. He didn’t want them to think of their mother’s death, or her killer, or that, perhaps most frightening, that their father felt vengeful often to the point of derangement. “Why don’t you know your friend’s name?”
    He stood, opened the refrigerator, poured her some more milk.
    â€œIs it Oliver?” Belle asked.
    â€œYes,” Andy sighed.
    â€œHe’s the one who killed my mom?”
    â€œYes,” Andy said. The chill of the refrigerator air on his arms.
    â€œWhat are you saying about him?”
    â€œI’m writing to the jail,” he said. He closed the refrigerator door. “They want to let him out.”
    â€œWill they?”
    â€œI hope not,” he said.
    â€œWhy not?
    â€œI don’t know, Belle.” What should he say? “I hope they don’t, but I actually don’t know. But even if they do, you know—even if they do, he can never hurt us again.”
    â€œThank you,” said Belle, taking the milk from his hands. Andy waited for the warmth to return to his hands. Oliver McGee was sitting in a jail cell just outside Okeechobee. His wife was cremated and sprinkled into the Atlantic. But he and Belle and Rachel were here, in this kitchen, in this house; they were together, they were alive.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have lied to you.”
    â€œWhat did you lie about?” Belle said.
    â€œNot knowing Oliver’s name,” he said. “I know it.”
    Belle didn’t seem to care one way or another. She poured the rest of the milk in the sink, deposited the cup. “I didn’t think he would hurt us. Grandma told us he was just a kid who made a stupid mistake.”
    â€œGrandma said that?”
    â€œShe said he would suffer for it the rest of his life, just as much as we would.”
    â€œWow,” Andy said. “I never knew you talked to Grandma about it.”
    â€œI used to, when I was little,” Belle said. She stood in the half-darkened doorway, her lovely face invisible in a shadow. “They should probably let him out of prison by now, don’t you think? He’s been there a really long time. Especially if he was just a kid when the accident