When I ask about the university, it’s as if I’ve finally hit the internal switch that engages him.
“Law,” he says. “I wanted to get an undergrad degree at Western, double major, criminology and economics, and then go to Queen’s for law.”
“Good plan,” I say.
He shrugs. “It was. It still is. I just need to get through some things first. Clean up my life and get it on track.”
We chat more about his plans, and Dalton keeps shooting me looks. He knows I’m going somewhere with this, but he can’t see it. Finally I end the interview and thank Sebastian for his time.
Once we’re away from the house, Dalton says, “He’s never stolen a car, has he?”
“He might have,” I say. “But only if the keys were in the ignition.”
“What about the rest? The questions about where he wanted to go to university, what he wanted to take?”
“I was following a hunch,” I say. “He seemed very well spoken. Polite. Intelligent. At ease. Confident.”
“Yeah…”
“Like Abbygail when she arrived, right?”
Dalton snorts.
“Would you have called her well spoken?” I ask.
“Fuck, no.”
“Extensive vocabulary? Good diction?”
Another snort. “If we’re talking profanity, yeah, she had an even better vocabulary than me. But that wasn’t her fault. School wasn’t exactly a priority in her life. She was barely literate when…”
He looks at me. “He doesn’t fit his background.”
“Sebastian is not a kid from the streets. Trust me. You can get some who are well read, self-taught like you, but that’s rare. You can get some from middle-class backgrounds, good educations, but that’s not the story he gave. Did Abbygail come to Rockton wearing a university shirt? Knowing what degrees she wanted? Where to get them?”
“Fuck no.”
“He could be faking it. Inventing a future for himself. But that was the one time he lit up. The one subject he engaged on.”
“Yeah, I noticed that. Until then, it was like he was reading lines for a role he studied. That last part, though, that was real.”
“And I think it’s the only part that was.”
THIRTY-TWO
According to our plans, the moment the sun breaks over the horizon we’ll be in the plane, rolling down the runway, taking April to Dawson. There’s a good chance it’ll be hours before anyone realizes we aren’t just at home, sleeping in while leaving Anders on duty.
The next morning, though, I have trouble getting April moving. My ultra-efficient sister dawdles enough that I start wondering if something’s wrong. To be honest, though, “dawdling” isn’t the right word. “Fussing” is better. After I pick her up, she insists on stopping by the clinic to check on Kenny, and then she begins fretting.
“April,” I say. “We know what to do for him. You practically wrote us a book.”
“This isn’t right,” she says. “You need a full-time doctor.”
“Are you volunteering?”
“Of course not. I’m saying that you cannot have a patient in this condition without proper medical care.”
I sigh. “We’ve been over this. The council needs to wait for a doctor to apply for entry. If you think I just haven’t fought hard enough, you’ve never seen me fight. And you’ve sure as hell never seen Eric fight.”