Excerpt of Included!

DOWN RIVERI squatted on my heels. “Your mother is very much about the present, Ithink. The present and the future. Not the past.” She studied the heavy sky andseemed oppressed by it. The tears had ceased, but she still looked sunken andgray. Beside her, the bouquet was brilliant and stark and weeping fresh. Itleaned against the stone that bore the dead boy’s name. “Does it bother youthat I’m here?” I asked.She grew suddenly still. “I never thought you killed him, Adam.” She put atentative hand on my leg; a gesture of comfort, I thought. “It doesn’t bother me.”I moved to place my hand over hers, but, at the last second, laid it on herforearm instead. She jerked back and a small hiss of pain passed though herlips. A dark certainty filled me. The same thing had happened at the hospitalwhen I’d touched her arm; she’d told me that I startled her. I doubted that now.She canted her eyes at the ground, held the arm against her body, as ifafraid I might reach for it again. Her shoulders angled away from me. She wasfrightened, so I spoke softly. “May I see?”“See what?” Defensive. Small.I sighed. “I caught your mother searching your room. She found the razorblade.” She rolled her shoulders in, made a ball of herself. I thought of the longsleeves she wore, the sweeping skirts, and the long pants. She kept her skin hidden.At first, I’d thought nothing of it, but the blade put everything into a differentlight.“She should not have done that. It’s an invasion.”“I can only assume that she’s worried about you.” I waited before I askedagain. “May I see?”She denied nothing, but her voice dwindled even further. “Don’t tell Daddy.”I held out an open palm. “It’s okay.”“I don’t do it much,” she said. Her eyes were soulful and afraid, but she heldout her arm, half-bent. I took the hand, found it hot and damp. Her fingerssqueezed as I pushed up the sleeve as gently as I could. Breath hissed betweenmy teeth. There were fresh cuts and those that had partially healed. And therewere scars, thin and white and cruel.“You weren’t at a health spa, were you?”She shrank away, almost to nothing. “Eighteen days of inpatient treatment,”she said. “A place in Colorado. The best, supposedly.”191