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“Rodney? What’s the matter?”
Rodney’s face was white, and his eyes wide, like someone who had seen a great horror.
He didn’t answer Griff’s question, so Griff opened the door wider.
“Come into the kitchen. It’s chilly out.” Not nearly as cold as it would get in January and February, but was below freezing anyway. The snow hadn’t melted although he’d been out to shovel the walks off, and one of the Landry boys had plowed the parking lot like they normally did.
Rodney had both arms holding his waist tight and walked slowly in, barely seeming to notice Griff strode beside him.
Griff put his hand on his shoulder, but when Rodney just stopped in the middle of the hall, Griff put a hand on his back and pushed him toward the kitchen.
“This way.” He reached around Rodney, opening the door and switching on all the lights as he guided the boy into the kitchen.
“Are you okay?” he asked, looking the kid over, trying to see if there was any sign of injury.
He was wearing a rather ratty looking hooded sweatshirt, with no beanie hat, and he just wore slip on shoes. No boots. Snow was caked on the bottom of his pants, and while he should be freezing cold, he wasn’t even shivering.
That fact alone made Griff’s heart tremble in fear. There was definitely something wrong, although he didn’t think it was a physical injury.
“Rodney. I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”
Rodney turned eyes toward his, and Griff almost stepped back. The eyes looked vacant, horrified, or something.
“My mom shot my dad; then she shot herself.”
Griff gasped.
“Are they both...dead?” He wasn’t sure how else to say it, although Rodney didn’t seem like he was in any condition to answer questions like that.
Rodney nodded. “I called 911, but I couldn’t stay.”
Griff wasn’t sure how he got out of there. Usually they would keep someone on the phone...they wouldn’t let the kid leave.
“When did you call?” he asked, thinking that the kid was going to need some kind of professional counseling service. Certainly Griff wasn’t qualified to deal with trauma of this nature.
“Just before I walked out of the house to walk here. So... A couple of hours ago?” Rodney didn’t seem like he was too sure of his answer.
Griff pulled a stool over in front of the oven, and then he turned the oven on, just to provide some heat.
“Didn’t whoever you talked to on the phone want you to stay?”
“She,” Rodney said derisively, showing the first emotion that seemed real. “Like I’m going to stay in my house with my two dead parents. I hung up on her, and walked out.” He looked down at his attire. “Got this at a secondhand store last week. I didn’t want to look like my parents. I didn’t want to end up like them.” He snorted. “I definitely don’t want to end up like my parents. They would never wear something like this.”
It was better than the trench coat that he’d been wearing around town. But Griff didn’t say that. He assumed that Rodney had been buying a jacket at a secondhand store because he had hopefully taken Griff’s words to heart, and was moving away from his fascination with death, but he didn’t want to wear the clothes his parents had provided. Whatever it was, Rodney was rambling, probably a defense mechanism his brain employed to keep him from thinking about the horror he’d seen.
Not that Griff was any expert in that.
“Man, I don’t know what to say. But I think you’re going to need to talk to someone other than me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“There are people who can help you. They’re trained in this kind of thing.”
“They’re just going to tell me to find the power deep within myself or something. So much crap. There is no power in me.” Rodney hung his head. “I don’t need human power. I need... Something stronger than I am.”
“God.”
Rodney lifted his head. “My dad scoffed at that idea, like religion was a crutch or something.”
