Chapter 48 Chapter Forty Seven

Thomas sat on the sofa in Ella's living room, facing the large window.A blinding light came across the lawn.He sometimes wants to be active.Stand up and have a drink.He is also hungry.But with so much to do, he couldn't move.He should go into the bedroom and talk to Ella.There must be something to say to her, to cheer her up, to beg her to get up, to yell at her to stop wandering around.There must be a short sentence that would do the trick, but he couldn't think of what it was.He needed to talk to Moira, apologize for knowing Theresa, and get her to get a lawyer to protect them.Should have called Squeak to see what the kid was doing and what he told Shortham.He should catch up with Dr. Hollis and ask when he'll be back to see Ella again.He couldn't spend the rest of his life outside his bedroom.He is very hungry.

While these are all small tasks, they seem insurmountable to him.He can't concentrate and has trouble figuring out what to do first. Please don't kill yourself, Ella, that won't work, it will hurt Moira.No, this sentence is useless.With that, he suddenly remembered what to say, a very sincere sentence: Please don't leave me.He began to cry, his mouth fell open, and he was crying silently. He ordered himself to think of other things. He sat there, looking at the blinding light over the lawn and listening to the soft babbling of the TV in Moira's room, which was playing commercials.

Moira knew Theresa now, and she knew Thomas knew too.There she would be, crying in front of the TV, digging her scalp with her fingernails, disappointed, disappointed by everyone, Lars, Thomas, everyone.Smoking for sure, and maybe she was holding a bottle of antidepressants.Things are going from bad to worse.Theresa was a cunning and insidious woman.She would sue Moira and take all the money.Others must know too, not just him.Lars must have taken Theresa to formal occasions where they felt the same way he did: he liked Theresa better. He looked towards Menriela's bedroom. She was still on the bed, motionless, and her bare feet could be seen through the door.

Once he went to the bathroom or fell asleep, Ella would go downstairs and grab a gun and kill herself.Lars had shown them all where the key to the safe was.She might not be good with a gun, might blow her own eye out and bleed to death, or knock her own nose off.People would laugh that they couldn't even kill themselves, this family, didn't even know how to shoot themselves in the head.What a shame. People his age would emigrate.It's up to him.Furious self-loathing drove him to look up into the sunlight.He stared at the sun until a white flash flashed in his eyes, and he ached.It's up to him.He stood up and walked out of the room.

His vision was already blurred because of staring at the sun. He walked to the stairs with his hands on the wainscot, and then walked slowly down by grabbing the guardrail.He blinked hard, trying to regain his vision. Lars' office is a quiet buffer zone.Thomas went in and looked from left to right, which was stupid because he knew exactly where the safe was.He walked to the middle, stopped by the desk, and ran his fingers lightly over the surface, where Lars's hands had rested before he went to the lawn.He felt better, as if he had Lars' approval. He walked to the bookshelf, walked to the fake book that looked indistinguishable from the real one, and pressed the sky blue leather cover with gold lettering, the spine of the book immediately popped open, and the key was on a small green felt Inside the insert.

Two keys, small, old-fashioned, on a key ring.Thomas took them out and found himself sweating for no real reason, and his mouth was full of saliva, as if he was going to be sick.He wondered if Lars felt the same way then, when Lars put his wallet in his desk drawer and wrote his filthy obscene suicide note, when he blamed Moira for what he was about to do, to escape Did he feel the same way when he chose to commit suicide due to future humiliation and blame Moira? Thomas closed the spine so Moira wouldn't notice.He walked over to the desk, squatted under his feet, and lifted the edge of the rug to reveal a brass handle set in the middle of the hardwood floor.He flicked it off, lifted a small piece of floorboard, and set it aside.

There, the beige metal lid has a red plastic finger hole.He stuck his fingers in and lifted it like the lid of a biscuit tin, and found the lid of the safe.More beige metal, a cheap-looking brown plastic handle with a navel-like hole in the middle.He inserted the key, turned it, and lifted the cover.He got down on his stomach and snaked his hand through the narrow neck of the safe. The space below was about two feet square, and there was a pile of papers, a book, and some jewelry in a goatskin envelope.Thomas groped down again, leaning his body and thrusting his whole arm in, to the edge of a box.He took out the box and lifted the lid respectfully with both hands: a heavy pistol.Next to it, like a bridesmaid, are the matching two spare clips.

A stupid gun, a girl's gun.He looked at the barrel. It was engraved: Guernica, Made in Spain.He'd seen Picasso's painting of the same name, Horses Screaming into the Sky, in a school book that Beanie had shown them, but Thomas wasn't paying attention.He only remembered the horse's appearance, and he knew that the big-eyed horse was going to die, that it hadn't lived to see the horrors of World War II.It seems related in some sense, a kind of pity. He sits cross-legged, looking at the gun, Guernica. He stood up abruptly, tucked the gun into his back pocket, adjusted his stance_legs apart, and sneered.He reached back and drew the gun slowly—because he didn't know if the trigger was cocked—and held the gun in both hands, facing the doorway.

"Pop chirp," he said, throwing up his hands in a slow-motion recoil while simulating the sound of a gunshot, and he smiled, feeling better, and did it again, "Pop chirp." He still stared at the miniature pistol with a smile on his face.The gun is heavy and a solid little companion.He put the gun on the table, stooped, closed the safe door, but without the lock, the key in the lock, and stacked the cover under the table with the floor. He couldn't leave spare ammunition, just in case he had a gun.He kept a magazine in each front pocket of his jeans, very heavy, maybe 6 rounds in each magazine?Maybe 8 rounds, plus loaded.He raised his gun and looked it over carefully.

The trigger is silver.He squeezed the trigger slightly, feeling the moment the trigger fire, then let go. Don't—he remembered hearing it somewhere, movie or documentary—don't fix your elbow, or the recoil will shatter your bones.Is it a sci-fi movie?Maybe only laser guns do that.Anyway, if the shot was fired, he should have relaxed his elbow, but he didn't. He stopped suddenly, laughing at himself in a little surprise.Why did he shoot?He just needs to hide it from Ella to find it.He shook his head at the floor.What was he thinking about? His eyes stayed on the desk.He was thinking of shooting someone.His inner alter ego was thinking wildly.In fact, he can't even shoot.

It shouldn't be that difficult.In Uganda, children are soldiers.All of them can shoot.It can't be too difficult. He looked at the gun in his hand. The pistol was solid and had a button on it, a slide button next to the trigger, which he guessed was the safety lock.He pushed the button up, felt it click, then pushed it down again, up, down, up, down, and finally slipped the gun into his pocket. Feel much better.But now his pants are falling straight down.He took a few steps toward the door, finding it uncomfortable to do so.It was better, he felt chained to the ground, as if sinking into the ground. He stood in the doorway of the study, his hands spread out in his lap like a sharpshooter, his elbows bent so that the recoil could not shatter them. There were whispers upstairs, voices and music coming from the TV in Moira's room. That's what I'm doing, Thomas thought, heading for the stairs.