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  Marian had calmed a bit, but she leaned against Dean for comfort. None of this was making total sense to her. “So what does this mean?”

  “It means,” the doctor said, rubbing his hands together, “that we are going to recommend Briella leave Southside and start attending a smaller, private school.”

  “Parkhaven,” Tommy said at once. “You want us to send her to the mutant school.”

  Chapter Ten

  “A full scholarship,” Dean said when neither Marian nor Tommy had spoken for a full sweep of the clock’s second hand. “There’s that. Right? That means something.”

  The three of them sat around the kitchen table in Dean and Marian’s house. Marian got up to bring the coffee carafe to the table. She filled Dean’s cup first. Then her own. Tommy waved her off when she offered him some. She put the carafe on a small, lacy hot pad her mother had crocheted. Marian had always meant to ask for lessons in how to crochet, but Mom had been killed before she ever had the chance.

  “Of course they’re giving her a free ride. She’s a genius. They want kids like her going there, so they can show off to the rich assholes who can afford to pay the tuition. They’re going to use our kid to prove Parkhaven’s got what it takes. How else would they get anyone to attend that freakfest?” Tommy shook his head, then sat back in the chair hard enough to rock it a little. He ran both hands through his dirty blond hair, scratching at his scalp. “Shit, Marian. You can’t be thinking this is a good idea. You know the kids who go to that school are weird as fuck. And yeah, Briella’s got her…quirks…but…you know what I’m saying.”

  Tommy gave Marian a steady, fierce look that she met evenly, without flinching.

  “No, Tommy. What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that she’s weird. But she’s not that fucking weird.”

  She frowned at his language, and at the suggestion their daughter…no, fuck that. Her daughter was anything close to not being normal. “You heard the doctor. Briella is brilliant.”

  “And strange,” Tommy said. “Brilliant and strange. But she’s still not weird enough for Parkhaven.”

  “Have you ever even met anyone who went to school there?”

  Parkhaven had been founded sometime in the early 1920s as a private boarding school for orphans who’d been lucky enough to find benefactors, but it had not always been a school. The massive pseudo-Victorian building had been added to over the years without much thought toward matching the architecture, resulting in a sprawl of several wings and additions off the main building, along with other outbuildings on the property. In the fifties and sixties it had become a private hospital, taking care of mostly special- needs children whose families didn’t want to or could not care for them at home. By the seventies, lack of private funding had turned the hospital into a state psychiatric facility. It had been shut down in the mid-eighties and left empty until about fifteen years ago, when a board of trustees had renovated and reopened it as a private boarding school.

  Marian, Tommy and Dean had been kids in the early nineties, when Parkhaven took on the role that any old house does in the neighborhood – rumors that it was haunted, the scene of serial killings, that the crazy people who lived there had not gone on to homes or other places when the government defunded it, but instead were holed up in the attics and basements. Kids dared each other to break in and wander the rooms, abandoned but not empty. Marian had never done it, but she wouldn’t have put it past Tommy to have gone in with a couple cans of spray paint and a few joints to get stoned and mess the place up.

  “I had a cousin who married a guy who went there,” Dean said quietly.

  Tommy and Marian both looked at him. Tommy laughed, shaking his head, but it sounded more like he was mocking than amused. Marian ignored him. She did that a lot.

  “And?” she asked.

  Dean shrugged. “Seemed like a decent enough guy. Quiet.”

  “They’re all quiet,” Tommy said, “until they turn out to have jars of teeth in the basement.”

  Marian exploded. “You shut the fuck up, Tommy. This is your kid we’re talking about, and I get it, you have no fucking clue who she is or what it’s like living with her…”

  She broke off with a gasping, choking cry and got up to get herself a glass of cool water from the sink. She shrugged off Dean’s touch from her shoulder, hating herself for it but grateful that he knew her well enough to let her push him away without getting butthurt about the rejection. She gave herself a second or so to turn, expecting to have to tell Tommy to get his skinny ass out of her house, but she found him looking contrite. Almost believably so.

  “You’re right. I’m an asshole,” he said.

  Her anger deflated, a pinpricked balloon. Marian leaned against the counter and crossed her arms over her chest. “We all know Briella has always been different. Special. You heard what Spector said. Southside has done all they can for her. Going to Parkhaven will be good for her. And if they’re going to give her a free ride, provide her with an education that could get her into a really good college.… The opportunities she’ll have from this are so much more than we could possibly ever give her.”

  From the corner of her eye, Marian saw Dean flinch, and she felt worse about what she’d just said than when she’d shrugged off his comforting touch. Still, she lifted her chin. Money wasn’t everything, but damn it, money was always something, and it was no secret that she and Dean sometimes struggled with the basics, much less being able to afford anything above and beyond.

  “I don’t want my kid to be a charity case,” Tommy said in a low voice.

  “I would rather take charity than hold on to my damned pride, if it means I can see my daughter go to the best school and have the brightest future possible. And unless you plan to fully fund her way through her college education, Tommy, it’s not going to be up to you whether or not we turn this down. Buy her a laptop, buy her a new one every year, if that makes you feel like a hotshot. But in the end, Briella deserves whatever chances we can give her.” Marian finished with her hands on her hips, glaring, but kept her voice low.

  Tommy had the grace to look ashamed. “If you really want to send her away to school, Mare—”

  “I don’t,” she interrupted. “I don’t want to send her away.”

  But she did, didn’t she? Maybe just a little bit? Wasn’t there a bit of shameful comfort in the idea of someone else taking on the burden of the constant questions, the temper tantrums? The derision? Hell, just the general burden of having a kid at all, much less one like Briella.

  “There are other places to send her,” Tommy finished as though she hadn’t spoken. “We could look into it, that’s all I’m saying. If you think she needs to go to private school, we could find another one.”

  “And once again, who’s going to pay for it? You?” Marian shook her head.

  Tommy cleared his throat and hitched forward in the chair. “I could. Yeah.”

  “I can’t trust you, Tommy. You’d get her settled in some school and then all of a sudden I’d be getting notices that the bills aren’t paid, and we’d have to bring her home. I won’t do that to her.”

  Dean, wisely, had been staying out of it, but now spoke up. “She’s too young to go away to school, anyhow. Even Parkhaven will only take her as a day student until she’s twelve, and then they’ll have to assess her to see if she’s ready for full-time.”

  The look Tommy gave Dean was level and considering. “So you think she ought to go there?”

  “I think that we should do whatever is best for her,” Dean said.

  The front door opened and, startled, Marian looked at the clock on the soffit above the sink. They’d been talking about this for so long, she’d forgotten Briella would be getting off the bus. Her small figure appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, and they all turned to look.

  “You didn’t come to the bus stop to get me,