Read Riptide for Free Online Page B

fixed her with his stare. “Was it a fair lady in the cellar? Did she fall down?”
    “Richard,” she said slowly, “if you know anything about the cellar or our great-grandfather, I want you to tell me. Please.”
    “What’ll you give me if I do?”
    “Anything, whatever you want.”
    “I want the house.”
    “You know you can’t live there. You can barely manage this place. Just tell me whatever you know.”
    “I know it should have been my house. That’s what I know.”
    She decided he had no secret information. He was only free-associating, riffing on her own conversational tacks.
    “You know how that worked,” she said. “You got the money, I got the house. You thought it was fair at the time. You didn’t even want the house, remember?”
    “Bullshit. Why wouldn’t I want the house? Think I want to live here? Like this? In this shit ? You took everything from me. It all worked out pretty good for you, didn’t it?”
    She felt a burning pressure behind her eyes. “I’m not happy about—about how things have worked out.”
    “Save it. I know you’re lying. You think I’m stupid, but I have news for you. I’m smarter than you think. I know things you don’t.”
    “Richard...”
    “I’m an MD.”
    “I know you are.”
    “I was a better doctor than Dad ever was. Him with his walk-in patients with no insurance, and then he puts a gun in his mouth. Right after I was born. Guess he really didn’t want a boy.” He laughed, an awful sound, empty of amusement.
    “It’s not funny,” she said.
    “Sure it is. Everything’s funny. Because we think we’re always going to be the same person. But then you get older, and your brain...it changes. And suddenly you’re somebody else.”
    The pressure on the backs of her eyes burned hotter. It pained her to know that he understood this much about himself. “Yes,” she whispered.
    “Maybe you’ll change, too. Like Dad. Like me.”
    “That’s not going to happen.”
    “If you were an MD, you’d know about genetics.”
    “I do know about genetics, Richard.”
    “Then you know it runs in the family. Like father, like son. Maybe like daughter, too.”
    “I’m thirty, Richard. The...change typically starts by the mid-twenties. That’s how it was for Dad. And you.”
    His face changed. He picked up the scissors again. The cutting blades gleamed with dangerous scintillation. “Numbers? You’re counting on numbers to save you? What we have, the thing that changes us—it’s in our blood.”
    “Our father was twenty-five when he began to show symptoms. You were twenty-six. I’m thirty.”
    “It’s not too late for you.”
    “I think it is.”
    “Never too late. It’s in our blood .” He punctuated the last word with a swing of his hand that passed the scissors within two feet of her. She shrank back. She couldn’t help it.
    He would never assault her. He was her little brother.
    Except he wasn’t so little anymore. He was six inches taller than she was, and he was paranoid, delusional, crazy.
    He stepped closer. The hand holding the scissors was tightly clenched, the knuckles squeezed white.
    She reached for the door. “I need to be going.”
    “You’re afraid. Afraid of me.”
    “I just have things to do.”
    “Afraid,” he said again, and with his free hand he grabbed her by the wrist.
    “Please let go of me,” she said without inflection.
    After a long moment he released her. “Don’t let me keep you. I never wanted you here. You’re a nuisance. Get out. Run away.”
    She opened the door and stepped into the hall, daring a backward look. “Take care of yourself, Richard, okay?”
    “Fuck you.” He filled the doorway, his face distorted. “You took the house from me. You took everything and left me to rot in hell, so fuck you, bitch, fuck you! ”
    He slammed the scissors into the door frame, planting them in the cheap wood. She recoiled, stumbling. He laughed, a raging idiot laughter that echoed down the hall, pursuing