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“Mother!”
Her head snapped up. She’d been thinking about…well, it didn’t matter what she’d been thinking about. All that mattered was her son right now. She set the dish she’d been washing in the pot down and turned from looking out the rough window at the bayou. Her son was standing there, wiping his head. He’d brought a sack of something, his hair a right mess.
“What happened, dear?” she asked, taking in the horribly tangled curls of his hair.
“I visited Father in the city. He gave us this money!” He hefted the sack onto the counter. Money, stacks of fives and tens, fell out.
“Oh my goodness…!” She’d always had faith that he would help them out. Her husband had left them, true, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care anymore. Hands on her mouth, she mumbled, “This is a miracle!”
“It was all thanks to him,” her son said.
“This is cause for celebration. But first,” she picked at the tangled mess of his hair, “we need to take care of your hair, Michael.”
”I told you my name is Alastor,” he complained instantly, like he always did. He thought about her comment before nodding in the petulant way children do.
“Good, Child. Let’s go on and sit on the bed.” They walked the few feet to the bed where they sat, her son in front of her. She picked up her own brush from the little makeshift shelf and began fighting the pile of hair.
It was a struggle. It put up a solid fight. Slowly, she was winning the fight. The brush…it was changing colours. She couldn’t figure out what it was. Whatever it was was thickening. She took a quick smell of it, eyes widening.
Blood . She checked his head more closely. It didn’t look like he was bleeding. No. The blood was tangled, chunky, like it’d had time to thicken. It wasn’t from a deer. No, she could somehow tell it was human.
How had he gotten so much blood in his hair?
“Mother? What’s wrong?”
“Oh!” She rushed to cover, “Nothing, honey. I was just thinking that we might want to wash your hair out!”
He nodded.
“Let’s go on over to the river,” she said, standing and tucking her brush into her dress pocket to clean it too.
“Okay!” As they were leaving, he said as an afterthought, “I forgot to tell you. After I got the money from Father, he died. Someone broke in and killed him and his whole family.”
Her heart stopped.
No, he didn’t do it. He wouldn’t do it. She knew that he didn’t care for his father. He still wouldn’t do it!
He wasn’t a murderer. Not at twelve.
He didn’t do it.