Read Exit Point for Free Online Page B

time she has been to my house since the service. For a second, she imagines I will walk out of the kitchen half-dressed and smelling of the after-shave she gave me on my birthday. Tears well behind her eyes; she swallows. Her sadness makes me ache. “Anybody home?”
    Footsteps sound above her. Amy appears at the top of the stairs. Her blouse is half undone. Her face is marshmallow white. Herb quickly looms behind her. “Oh, Hannah.” He is flustered. Red-faced. “Hi.”
    “Amy?” Hannah stares at my sister. Something isn’t right. “What’s going on? Where are your mom and dad?”
    “They went to Leavenworth for a night.” Amy launches herself down the stairs and into Hannah’s arms. “They left me with Auntie Susan and Uncle Herb.” My sister is shaking, and she is very, very cold.
    “Amy forgot her homework.” Herb comesdown the stairs behind her. The air grows heavier, oilier. I move closer to Amy and Hannah, stare into the pale blue eyes of the stranger who was my uncle. “When we got here, she complained about a rash on her chest so we were upstairs having a look,” he says.
    Hannah doesn’t recognize the lie. She doesn’t even notice Amy’s quick little breath when Herb says it. But Hannah notices Herb’s pants. Or more specifically, his fly.
    It is undone.
    Somewhere at the heart of her, Hannah remembers our dream. And she knows there is no rash.
    Gently, she tilts Amy’s face up. “Are you okay?” she asks softly.
    My sister doesn’t answer. She looks away, buries her head in Hannah’s chest. But not before Hannah sees the truth in Amy’s eyes.
    “She’s fine,” Herb bluffs. “I can’t see a rash myself, but you know how kids are.” He slips on his shoes, grabs Amy’s homework from the hall table. “I’ll get Susan to have a look when we get back. Come on, Amy. Grab your coat. We have to get to Brad’s game.”
    Don’t let him take her , I yell to Hannah. Keep her safe .
    Hannah’s mind clicks over with gear-like precision. She is thinking of what she should do, whether to call my parents, what she will do if she can’t find them. She smiles at Herb. “Amy and I had a breakfast date, didn’t we, Amy?”
    Amy nods. She won’t look up.
    Herb’s eyes narrow. “Barbara and Robert didn’t say anything about that.”
    “They probably forgot,” Hannah says breezily. “It’s a standing thing, every Saturday since...you know.” It is a lie, but she is counting on Herb being made uncomfortable by the unspoken reference to my death. He is. When he doesn’t respond, Hannah continues. “We’re usually gone about an hour and a half.”
    Herb wants Amy with him, where he can make sure she stays quiet. “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think—”
    The pizza flyer interrupts him. I send it scuttling across the floor, flipping and turning on the breeze. Herb watches it land on top of his shoe. Flustered, he wonders, How did that happen? The air is dead calm.
    I grin. No it isn’t. Not with me around.
    “Don’t worry about it, Captain Underwood.” Hannah uses his title deliberately and then widens her smile as much as she dares. “I’ll bring Amy back to your place by noon.”
    Herb wants to resist, but his blackness is no match for Hannah’s goodness. He drops his eyes, bends to pick up the flyer. “By noon,” he repeats.
    My parents are back by 11:30. They sit in Hannah’s living room, perching uneasily on the edge of the sofa. Amy is curled up in Mom’s lap. Hannah and her father sit across from them.
    “So you didn’t actually see anything?” Dad asks Hannah for the third time.
    “Amy’s shirt was undone,” Hannah repeats. “And Herb’s fly was down.”
    When we first stop the rat bastard, I am crazy happy. I follow Amy and Hannah to McDonald’s, and I don’t even care that I can’t eat the food. But now my happiness has dissolved.
    “These are serious charges,” Mr. Sinclair,Hannah’s father, says mildly. He is a lawyer. In spite of that, I