Chapter 63

"How much weighthave you lost, Mason?"

I'm flipping through the pages of my anatomy textbook as I sit on the bed in my room. My mother called me and immediately started grilling me on whether I'm taking care of myself. She's right—I'm not eating enough, and what I eat is crap. But what can I do? I'm sure as hell not going to start cooking myself healthy meals every night. It's cafeteria food or else ramen noodles. Or if I'm feeling motivated, I'll crack open a box of macaroni and cheese—the kind where the cheese comes in a fine powder.

"I'm fine, Mom," I say.

"Come home this weekend," she says. "Have a home-cooked meal."

I don't point out that any "home-cooked meal" is in fact cooked by the housekeeper. For years, my father and I have been complimenting my mother on Georgette's food. My mother would routinely burn toast.

"I guess so," I say.

Thanksgiving break isn't for a few more weeks, and some real food would be amazing. I could probably spare a couple of hours of studying for that.

"You can bring your girlfriend if you'd like," she adds in a sly voice. "We'd love to meet her, darling."

My mother has always taken too big an interest in my personal life. She misses my college girlfriend, Sienna. My mother would have married Sienna herself if she could have.

"I don't have a girlfriend, Mom," I try to tell her.

"You?" she snorts. "Of course you do."

I don't know what to say to that.

After giving it some thought, I decide to invite Sasha to come. She's not my girlfriend, but I can't imagine asking anyone else. But I'm really into her these days, and it wouldn't be painful to spend a whole night together.

I ask Sasha during anatomy lab when it's just the two of us.

"Your parents' house?" Sasha asks, genuinely surprised.

Christ, it's not like I gave her an engagement ring. I carefully play it down.

"I just want a friend with me to help get me through the evening," I explain. "Come on, aren't you a little bit curious?"

"A little bit," Sasha admits with a smile. "What should I wear?"

I pick Sasha up at five o'clock on Saturday night, and my parents are a forty-five-minute drive away. I told her to dress casual, and she looks… perfect. She's wearing a knee-length skirt—could be shorter, but probably better it's not since I'm bringing her to meet my parents. I like that I can see a tiny bit of cleavage poking out of her neckline. And when she leans forward, I catch a glimpse of a lacy black bra strap. So damn hot.

"Wow," I say.

Sasha's olive skin colors slightly, which is even sexier. "What?"

"You look… really nice."

I can't stop looking at her. I mean, I always think she's attractive, but damn.

And that's when I decide: tonight, after we leave my parents' house, I'm going to ask Sasha out on a real date. No-strings-attached sex is fun, but it's not enough anymore. I probably sound like a tool saying this, but I want Sasha to be my girlfriend. I'm going to talk her into it somehow. I can be very persuasive.

"I love your car," Sasha says as she climbs into the passenger's seat. She sweeps her dark hair off her olive shoulders as she looks down at the gears. "You drive a stick?"

"Yep."

"I'm impressed. Sticks are cool."

She thinks I'm cool. Score one for Howard.

At first, I tune in to the radio, but we end up talking so much that I just turn it off. Mostly, we talk about school and our classmates. Sasha knows all the gossip, which makes me feel really out of the loop. I've been studying too much, I guess.

Then again, there's no such thing as too much studying, right?

We get to my parents' house just before six. I still have my keys to the front door, but I figure the polite thing to do is ring the bell. My mother would never forgive me if I busted into the house with company, not giving any warning.

My mother responds to the bell herself. She gets this huge smile on her face when she sees us, although she doesn't hug me. We're not a family that does lots of hugs, which is fine by me. My mom looks about ten years younger than the last time I saw her—all those lines on her forehead are gone. Botox, I'm almost positive. Not that I'd ask.

"Hello, darling," Mom coos. Then she turns to Sasha. "And this must be Sasha."

Sasha nods. "That's right," she says, fiddling with her shirt collar.

As we walk inside, I can smell dinner. It smells amazing. So much better than the cafeteria crap. I glance over at Sasha, who looks pale.

"What's wrong?" I whisper.

"This place is huge," she whispers back. "When I lived at home, I shared a bedroom with my two sisters."

I always thought of my parents' house as just home, but now that Sasha pointed it out, I guess she's right. The foyer opens up into an impressive living room, with three leather couches and the latest model in large-screen television sets. In the far corner of the room is a fireplace that is now burning bright-orange flames. A wide, carpeted staircase leads up to the second of three stories that make up the house.

I can see a little crease form between Sasha's brows, and instinctively, I fling my arm around her shoulders. She stares up at me with her mouth hanging open—I've never done anything like that before. But she doesn't push me away, so I count that as a win.

"Sasha," my mother gushes, "I absolutely must give you a tour of the house."

"Um… okay…" Sasha says.

"Mason," my mother says, "would you be a dear and take your and Sasha's coats into the den?"

As my mother drags away my date, I wander in the direction of the den. As expected, my father is sitting in a reclining chair, reading The New England Journal of Medicine. Dad's black hair is now threaded with gray, as is his beard, but his dark eyes still scare the shit out of me. I instinctively straighten my posture as I carefully arrange the coats on an empty sofa.

My father looks up at the sound and peers at me over the rim of his reading glasses.

"Mason," he says in a deep, rumbling voice several octaves lower than mine. "I'm glad you were able to make it."

I nod.

"How is school going?" he asks. "At the top of your class, I assume."

I nod again. "Yes, sir."

"Of course," my father says. "You're my son, aren't you?"

My father stands up, and I straighten my spine further, but I'm still not as tall as he is. He's six foot one, and I'm an inch shy of six feet. It kills me that I didn't even hit six feet. And when I stare at people, they don't cower in fear. They just smile at me and maybe ask me if I want to go on a date with their granddaughter.

I'm nothing like my dad. And that disappoints the hell out of him.

"Well, I'm going to get washed up for dinner," my father says as he brushes off his pants. "I'll see you at the dinner table, Mason."

"Yes, sir," I say, letting out a breath as my father leaves the room.

I lag behind in the den. This one room feels like a castle compared to my dorm back at school. It's nice to be able to walk across the room without bumping into furniture or tripping over Abe's dirty laundry.

I cross the room and find myself at my father's desk. It's a large mahogany piece that cost a small fortune—I'm no stranger to expensive furniture, but I actually gasped when I saw the price tag on it when it was delivered last year. I sit down at the desk, wondering when I'll have enough money to afford a den of my own that looks like this. I still have four years of medical school ahead of me, then a long, low-paying residency. My parents lend me a lot of money, but they wouldn't be willing to bankroll me if I wanted to buy a house, and I'd never ask.

I try to open the desk drawer, but it's locked. Typical of my father. I feel around under the drawer and immediately touch the outline of the key that is taped to the bottom of the drawer. My father is still using the same hiding places.

Open the drawer.

I hear the command loud and clear, as if someone is speaking to me, right in my ear. A deep male voice that I can't identify. I look around the room, but nobody is there.

Huh. That's weird.

Open the drawer, Mason.

"Hello?" I say aloud. Someone definitely said something that time. I heard it. I glance over and see that the door to the room is closed. I'm alone.

The television? Could it be the television? I walk over to the set and examine it for a second—it's not turned on. The stereo is off too. And besides, they said my name.

Where the hell did that voice come from?

I return to the desk and examine the drawer. When I was younger, it used to be a game to unlock my father's desk drawers without him knowing about it. There was never anything interesting in the drawers back then. Usually, I just found some boring bills, and once, I found a copy of their mortgage, with numbers so high that it made me dizzy. I'm a little old now to be digging around in my father's desk drawer. Still, I find myself pushing the key into the lock.

I don't know what I had expected to find. But I hadn't expected to find a .357 Magnum.

I pick up the gun, and a handful of bullets roll to the front of the drawer. I know how to shoot. My dad firmly believes in the right to bear arms and had taken me to a range for shooting practice when I was younger. We even went hunting a couple of times, but we didn't kill anything, probably because I was so loud that I scared all the animals away. This gun feels lighter than the ones I had held before, easily concealable in one's pocket. But still really powerful.

Take the gun.

The sound of the command startles me, and I nearly drop the gun on the floor. I blink my eyes, desperately looking around the room.

"Who's there?" I snap.

The room is empty.

I take a deep breath and study the gun in my hand. My father keeps it around for protection, but the house is already alarmed up the wazoo. There's no way anyone is getting into this fortress, and even if someone did, isn't there some statistic that showed that you're more likely to accidentally shoot a family member than a burglar? Or something like that.

I'm certain now that nobody else is in the room. But this voice is real. I heard it loud and clear. And it seems to somehow know something I don't.

"Why do I need it?" I say aloud.

No answer.

Well, what did I expect? To have a conversation about firearms with some invisible person?

Still, I can't shake the feeling that I'm going to need this gun.

I take a deep breath then scoop out the bullets and lock the desk drawer. I place the gun and the bullets in the pocket of my coat that's lying on the sofa. Then I leave the room to join my family for dinner.