state how much she truly cared about him. How she’d never intentionally hurt him. How she’d rather die than lose another child.
Nicholas laughed despite the circumstances. He just couldn’t help himself. What a joke that was, though. Because if the tens of thousands of dollars from companies such as Kraft and Kellogg’s and Pine-Sol hadn’t been enough to keep Timmy alive despite all the money that had been rolling in, what in the hell were Nicholas’s chances? Not good, to say the least. Like Annabeth Preston had always told him, Nicholas wasn’t worth one thin dime. Never had been and never would be.
Refocusing his vision on Mickey Mouse’s arms (which were cleverly pointing out the hour and minute) Nicholas realised that he’d better get a move on. And fast. He figured he had about thirty seconds left now if he was lucky before Annabeth Preston really blew her top. Patience might have been a virtue in the bible – which his mother read and quoted incessantly – but it sure as hell didn’t have any place in her personal psychological inventory. Then again, where lay the great surprise in that? All religious people hypocrites, weren’t they? Do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do types? Sure as hell seemed like it to him.
Pulling his wet underpants back up around his thin waist with a loud elastic snap, Nicholas slipped his legs into a pair of dark blue shorts so that prying eyes couldn’t see his shame. Much like upsetting his mother, it was never a good idea to embarrass her, either. There were consequences to that, too. Harsh consequences. Always had been and always would be.
Shame properly camouflaged, Nicholas hustled down the long hallway past all the framed pictures hanging on the wall and locked their heavy wooden front door behind him before double-timing it down the cracked walkway to their car. Climbing up into the back seat as quietly as he could, he pulled shut the door softly, being very careful to avoid making any sort of unnecessary noise. Annabeth Preston wasn’t the kind of woman who wasted her words. When she said that children existed to be seen and not heard she really meant it. It wasn’t just a silly cliché to her. Hell, she’d proved that much the day she’d split Timmy’s skull clean in two for committing the unforgivable sin of succeeding so wildly in an area in which she’d failed so miserably.
Nicholas winced at the excruciating memory of his little brother’s horrific death as his mother hummed softly to herself beneath her breath and backed their car carefully out of the driveway. Immediately after his little brother’s head had slammed down into the sink, Timmy’s big brown eyes had filled up completely with blood, making him look a lot more like some sort of deranged werewolf in a low-budget horror flick than a five-year-old actor who’d always seemed just as home in front of the television cameras as he’d been while playing with his older brother in their beloved sandbox out in the backyard.
Nicholas shifted uncomfortably in his seat from the icky feeling of his soiled underwear as his mother manoeuvred the car’s gear stick in a groan of missed gears for a moment or two before she finally managed to find the right one and pulled away from the house, cursing her hateful jealousy beneath his own breath. Because despite her many years of rigorous theatrical training at the prestigious Actors Academy in New York City, Annabeth Preston’s stage career had ended quite differently than had poor little Timmy’s. Had ended with a pathetic whimper rather than with the ear-shattering bang to which she’d subjected Nicholas’s unfortunate little brother. In the end, there had been no shouts of encore! for Annabeth Preston; no throwing of red roses at her feet; no breathless reviews in all the city’s biggest newspapers extolling her unparalleled thespian talents. Instead, the last time she’d been on stage had been when she’d portrayed ‘Maid Marian’ in an off-off-Broadway production of Robin Hood that hadn’t even completed its scheduled three-week run due to the laughably poor attendance. Ten years later – when Nicholas would find himself sitting alone in a darkened movie theater and watching Faye Dunaway chill people’s blood with her deliciously evil turn as Joan Crawford in a big-screen showing of Mommie Dearest – he’d catch himself thinking that the famously bitchy subject of the iconic film hadn’t been all that bad of a mother. Not really. Not anything with which Nicholas and Timmy wouldn’t have