He’s only curious, after all. About himself, about his mind. In the hospital, after talking to his doctors about why he was experiencing such violent thoughts and urges, he’d done copious amounts of research about the MAOA gene, the warrior gene, and its link to aggressive behavior. The sexier, and less accurate, name was the murder gene. According to one study he memorized, of nine hundred criminals in a cohort in Finland, the group had committed over eleven hundred murders. Were they destined to kill? Compelled? Was this murder gene a real thing? He didn’t know, but wow, he was fascinated by the possibility.
He’d always been convinced the urges he was feeling were organic, though he held back with the doctors on just how intense the impulses were. He was smart; they all knew he was smart, so they dug, deep, into his psyche. They tried everything to pull out the seeds that were germinating inside of him, but he was able to control what he told them, what he said. He didn’t want to spend his life in the hospital, and he knew he could control his compulsions if only he understood himself. This was a dopamine thing. A serotonin thing. A coiled snake that lived in his head, not created by his environment. He’d had a fantastic upbringing with a wonderful mother, so where did his darkness come from?
His genes.
His father.
Yes, there was free will. Yes, there was socially acceptable behavior. Yes, he could be conditioned to not hurt people.
But in order to quell a craving, first you must slake the thirst.
It took him forever to get the name out of Winterborn. He’d befriended a woman who worked there, seduced and cajoled and flattered and begged and maybe did a tiny bit of threatening until she finally broke the rules and gave him the details.
He’d left her by the side of a quiet Georgia road, inside a thick field of cotton. An inelegant solution, but as far as he knew, her body had never been recovered. He missed her sometimes. She’d been so nice to him, in the beginning.
Once he had the name, it had taken him all of ten minutes to find his father. Living in Nashville, only miles away from his childhood home. Not a huge surprise; Winterborn was a popular regional sperm bank. He’d probably seen his father in the store or driving downtown sometime.
He followed. It’s what he did.
His father and stepmother were a typical Nashville couple, did all the typical Nashville things. It was fun watching them, getting to know their tastes and patterns. Until he trailed them to Charlotte and 23rd Avenue North and saw them enter the building that would change all their lives forever.
His father, with his beautiful fragile, lovely wife, at a fertility clinic.
Olivia had given Peyton a tremulous smile in the building’s elevator, and Peyton fell in love with her in an instant. Fell, hard. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. The more he watched, the more he wanted her. She was his ideal. Perfection, in so many ways.
Oh, and their terrible problems. His heart really did go out to Olivia. She wanted it so much. She wasn’t all that different from the women who were pouring out their hearts to his mother online, night after night. They wanted this commonality, they wanted to carry, bear, and raise children. Some didn’t want a partner; some had a partner who couldn’t give them what they wanted. Some were gay, some were straight. Some had no kids, some full families they wanted to add to. One who needed to get pregnant again with a genetically matched child who didn’t have the crippling disease her other kids suffered from so “it” could be used as a bone marrow donor. She figured a different genetic stream might provide a healthy child or two. She had actually called the possible child “it.”
That bothered him, the harvesting of other children, but it wasn’t his problem.
Point was, the stories were endless, varied. Every life, every need, every desire, different.
Did they ever stop to think that the children might not be what they wanted? That a child would not heal the emptiness in their soul? That a child might tear a hole in an otherwise perfect life?
Online, his mother tried so hard to warn them. She tried to make them aware there could be issues, that everything wasn’t always sunshine and roses. She spoke from experience. She spoke from the heart. She spoke of his problems so eloquently while still protecting him. So loyal, his mom.
When he’d realized he was different, that he wasn’t sunshine and roses, he’d done everything they’d asked of him and more. He wanted to be good for his mother. He loved her. Loves her.
Those people in her group, they never listened.
He finishes placing the solar panel, taping it securely, and steps back into the darkness. The last traceable part of his previous life is journeying to its last stop. It’s heading east to the mountains, and he is not. He doesn’t feel sorry to see it go.
The phone shivers again, and this time he takes it out and looks at the breaking news alert.
He almost feels relief. Almost.
It’s over. As he feared, there will be no goodbye.
31
THE MOTHER
It is nearing dawn, and Darby hasn’t slept.
How could she? She’s been calling Peyton every five minutes for the past several hours to no avail, alternating frenetic speed-dialing with laps around the bottom floor of the house. Her calves and thighs ache. Her heart aches.
This is not the situation she ever thought she’d be in, faced with an impossible choice.
Confront her son and ask if he murdered a woman or call the police and tell them she knows the man in the sketch they’re circulating. And hope to God she does it before a stranger does.
The boy. He’s barely a man.
Apparently, he’s man enough, her mind helpfully provides. Man enough to rape. Man enough to strangle.
Her boy, that darkness in him. The rages. The altercations. The push and pull of love and hate.
It can’t be him. Her Peyton did not do this. The police have made a mistake.
Ah, but you were afraid of him when he was ten years old. Could they really have fixed him so easily? Did he not grow out of his problems, as the doctors thought, only found a way to channel them? To hold them close to his heart and never share them again? Have they finally risen up and overwhelmed him? Has he been hiding his true self this whole time?
No. It is not him. Of course it’s a mistake.
It started with night terrors. Peyton had slept alone for years with no problem, but after Scarlett was born, suddenly needed to be in Darby’s bed or he would scream in fright all night, waking the baby, who would join in the chorus.
Then the tantrums began.
Not typical tantrums, not crying because he couldn’t have candy at the checkout tantrums, but full-blown rages that forced her to lock him in his room so he wouldn’t hurt her, or the baby. Frustrated by the lack of targets, he would bang his head on the wall until huge lumps formed on his forehead.
She took him to his pediatrician. To specialists. There were brain scans, MRIs, drugs. So many drugs. He’d cry his little heart out at the kitchen table because he couldn’t feel anything anymore, then tear through the house ripping paintings from the walls and overturning tables if she tried to console him. You’re doing this to me. You hate me. You love her more than you love me.
More drugs. Higher dosages. They zombified him, and he sat, staring blankly at the walls, losing weight because she couldn’t rouse him to eat. He was tall and thin, a wraith with a shock of brown scarecrow hair and dead eyes.