I shake my head, determined, even though my stomach is sinking. “We need to find the key.”
“We can just break it open!”
“My father’s not going to have a safe that easy to fucking open.”
Shepherd shoves everything to the side. “Here!” He yanks a keychain out, a simple silver key dangling from it that he shoves into the keyhole, barely turning it before pulling it free.
I quickly close the drawer and turn to him. “How do you know if someone deserves to die?” I ask.
He quickly looks over at me, his face showing his confusion. “What?”
I hesitate before pointing at the bed. “There’s enough room to crawl under it and the closet is full.”
“I don’t think I’ll fit.”
“You’ll fit, it’s one of those raised beds,” I say as I shove him toward it. He drops to the ground and crawls under it before I slide in next to him with practiced ease a moment before the door opens.
“What happened?” Father asks as he walks in, and I feel my stomach tighten. For some reason I find myself closing my eyes as if I can avoid him that way. “This is why I tell Ronni again and again to only get you plastic cups.”
I quickly open my eyes and look past Shepherd as I realize Father’s kneeling down, mere inches from us to pick up the glass. If he thinks a piece fell under the bed, he’ll see Shepherd lying there.
Shit.
Thankfully, he stands up and drops the glass into the trash can. He goes into the connecting bathroom where I hear water running a moment before he returns to the bed.
“More,” Mom says.
“I think you’ve had enough, Cindy.”
“Dammit, William. More,” she says. “You’re confining me. Stop it.”
“You’re a mess. A fucking mess.” He backs away from the bed before turning and walking through the doorway, shutting the door behind him.
For a few minutes, Shepherd and I lie in dead silence. Not until we hear the creaky floorboard of the hallway upstairs do I breathe again. That’s when I hear Shepherd doing something. It sounds like he’s running his fingers along the frame of the bed a moment before he turns the flashlight on, shining it up.
His eyes seem to move across the scratches on the bottom, made from a pen that I know is still tucked along the edge of the frame. Although it’s been so long that the ink has probably dried up, I always kept it there. Some are simple drawings, but others are words that’d been etched in again and again.
I smack the phone out of his hand without thinking about it. “Let’s go.”
“What’s that?”
“Shh. Let’s go,” I say as I tug him after me.
Thankfully, he willingly follows, and Mom doesn’t make a sound as we slip out of the room and head down the stairs to the first floor. Outside, he walks toward the dog that’s tied up and eagerly waiting for us. He doesn’t even bark when we near him, but eagerly rushes up to Shepherd like the dog knows he’s a good person. I can’t help but wonder just how good he is. He’s helped me get this far; how far will he go?
The better question is why?
“Help me,” Shepherd says.
I glance over at Shepherd, confused on what he needs help with. “What?”
“It was written under the bed again and again.”
My entire body tenses and I feel my face heat up. I can’t tell if I’m upset or embarrassed, but I just want to move on from this. “I was a kid just playing around.”
“Help me? You really just write those two words over and over when playing around?”
“Shepherd, you don’t know everything or have to judge everything or whatever the fuck this is!” I say, voice rising for some reason.
He’s silent for almost a minute, and I think he’s dropped it until he says, “What part makes you think I’m judging you?”
I don’t even know. What I do know is that I want him to stop asking me questions. I just want to forget about everything in my life up until this moment. I want to start again. “Please, just drop it.”
“Fine. But you asked when I was in your mother’s room how you know if a person deserves to die. And if they make a child scared enough that they hide under the bed pleading for help from their drugged mother, then yes, I think they deserve to die.”