Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

There was noise in the house again. The oppressive despair from her husband’s death hadn’t gone away, not completely, but Arliss helped chase it into the corners. The boys fought and laughed, and fought some more, like eight-year-olds were wont to do. They loved having their uncle Arliss around. For a man who rarely smiled, he sure made everyone laugh.

Mim hid behind the security of the laptop screen. Constance glared at her, horrifically loud music buzzing out of her earbuds like melting brain matter. Her lips pursed in a perpetually sickened, are-you-kidding-me sneer. If Mim hadn’t mandated she stay in the common areas of the house until after dinner, the kid would have stayed in her room and survived on nothing but Cheetos and Diet Coke.

A glance at the spreadsheet on her computer smacked Mim out of her momentary bliss. Budgeting sucked the life out her. Ethan had had good life insurance through his engineering firm, but the heartless bastards were tying up the payout in court, saying the explosion that killed him was his fault. Arliss paid rent – way too much for the cramped bedroom. He offered more, reasoning that she was feeding him, but she reminded him he bought most of the groceries – and cooked them too, like he was doing now.

Matthew, the younger of the twins, opened the fridge. His head leaned back in an honest hoot of laughter that showed his teeth, then darkened suddenly as if he’d just recalled some reason to be angry with his twin brother. Matthew not only looked like Arliss, he also possessed his uncle’s tendency toward an impressive mean-mug.

Michael, the older twin by mere minutes, stood on a chair at the counter grating a knob of frozen butter into a chilled bowl of flour. He was the darker of the two, and less emotional – like his father. He said something under his breath that Mim couldn’t hear. Whatever it was, it set Matthew off and he slammed the fridge door with his foot. Stumbling in the process, he dropped the entire quart of buttermilk onto the floor.

He froze, straddling the puddle, blue eyes wide, chin quivering.

“I wrecked everything!”

Michael stopped grating his frozen butter on the downstroke. Even Constance’s withering side-eye warmed for a split second.

Mim held her breath. Everyone in the house was always a half a blink from breaking into tears. For some reason, buttermilk had been hard to find at any of the stores around Anchorage. It was essential to Grumpy’s biscuit recipe. Cutter barked at people all day long. He was surely tense from work. It was only natural and certainly understandable if he snapped.

Instead, the man who never bumbled anything did a half turn and knocked a cup of flour off the counter with his elbow. He gave an easy chuckle, as if he spilled flour on top of buttermilk puddles every day, and tossed the towel from his shoulder over the mess. Matthew’s hesitant sniffle turned into giggles – until he opened the fridge and scanned the inside. “But… we’re out of buttermilk.”

“Au contraire, mon frère,” Arliss said, grabbing the regular milk from the fridge. “We’ll make some up before we wipe our wreck off the floor. All it takes is a little milk and a couple of teaspoons of vinegar.”

“That sounds gross,” Michael said, grating the butter again.

“That stew smells delicious,” Mim said.

Cutter adjusted Michael’s grip so he didn’t grate his fingers off. “We have Chief Phillips to thank for the caribou.”

“Speaking of caribou,” Mim said, “I found Ethan’s hunting knife in the chest of drawers the other day. He called it his M.A.K. – multianimal knife. He took that shop on Fifth Avenue a piece of fossilized mammoth tooth that he’d found and they used it to make the handle. I think he’d want you to start using it when you’re out in the bush.”

Michael looked up from his grater. “I love that knife store. Uncle Arliss has taken us there before.”

“I’m sure he has.” Mim smiled at her son and then focused on Arliss again. “Are you sure the chief’s okay with this Juneau trip?”

“It was her idea,” Cutter said. His eyes narrowed. “Funny thing, though. She referred to you as Mim, like you guys know each other. Am I missing something?”

“Nope.” Mim did her best to fake ignorance. She had in fact confided her worries about Arliss’s dark moods to the chief.

Arliss studied her for a long moment and then shrugged. He interrogated people for a living, so she doubted he was fooled. He was just too much of a gentleman to press her.

“We’ll just get in your way,” Mim said, hoping he’d argue with her.

“Not at all.” He looked up from helping Michael cut in the grated butter. “I’m only there in case Judge Forsberg sequesters the jury.”

“What’s sequesters?” Matthew asked.

“When we keep people in a hotel so they won’t hear any wrong information. We help them stay safe and get them back and forth to the courthouse so they—”

“So,” Constance cut him off. “Basically a glorified bus driver.”

“Kind of,” Cutter said, nodding thoughtfully. He knew better than letting a teenage girl offend him. “Really it’s not even that cool. I’m like the guy who makes sure the glorified bus drivers have what they need to do their jobs.”

“I say we go, Mom,” Matthew piped.

“Me too!” Michael said.

“You took spring break off to be home with the kids while they’re out of school,” Cutter said. “I have plenty of air miles and I found a four-bedroom Vrbo that’s only twenty dollars a day over my hotel allowance. That’s a hundred bucks for a five-day vacation. Sounds like a good deal to me. Make the government work for us for a change.” The normally stone-faced Arliss Cutter was beginning to sound giddy. “Come on,” he said. “We could go for some hikes, get out and see the glacier, roast s’mores on the beach—”

Michael’s head snapped up.