Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (Ernest Cunningham, #1)

by Benjamin Stevenson

I should have started with that, but I promised to be reliable, not competent.

That’s a lie, actually. I wouldn’t be friends with people who called after midnight.

Just quickly: I’m actually thirty-eight in this bit, forty-one when we catch up to the present day,

I’ll tell you a little bit about Lucy. Lucy runs an independent online business, by which I mean she loses money on the internet periodically. She is a Small Business Owner in the same way Andy is a Feminist, in that she declares it loudly, often, and she’s the only one who believes it.

was easier to tell where my dad had been than to see where he was. The empty armchair in the living room. The plate in the oven. Stubble in the bathroom sink. Three empty holsters in a six-pack in the fridge. My father was footprints, residue.

“You’re digging around because you want to get rid of Crawford,” I said. “You know that the longer it takes to identify a John Doe, the more police they’ll send. And if Michael’s on edge, it will ruin your plan for the weekend.”

We never call Jeremy anything but his first name. It’s a thing, I’ve noticed, when someone dies young. Like they haven’t lived into the legacy of their surname. Sofia might not think so, that it’s not what’s in your blood or on your birth certificate that matters, but she still cares which way the names go around the hyphen. It’s why you can go from Ernest, as you practice the rigid capital E over and over in bright crayon; to Cunners, on the second-grade football team; to Mr. Cunningham, speaking into the snake’s head of a courtroom microphone; to Ernest James Cunningham printed inside a wreath, on a pamphlet handed out in the archway of a church. Because you get your name back when you die—all of it. I’ve noticed that too. That’s legacy. It’s why Jeremy never made it past Jeremy.

My mother has moved around roles in the banking sector since, retiring from a senior position, but on this day she was a teller. This was the 90s, when banks had a full army of neckerchief-wearing young women behind plexiglass windows instead of one besuited university graduate with an iPad and the audacity to make you do things yourself.

To keep Ronald Knox happy—since all clues lighted upon must be presented to the reader—here are the clues I used to put it together: Mary Westmacott; fifty-thousand dollars; my jaw; my hand; Sky Lodge’s snow cams; Sofia’s malpractice suit; a Brisbane PO box; Lucy cocking an imaginary gun against her head; a double-occupancy coffin; vomit; a speeding fine; a handbrake; a loupe; physiotherapy; an unsolved assault; a chivalrous and shivering husband; “the boss”; a jacket; footprints; Lucy’s nervous wait; a pyramid scheme; sore toes; my chalet’s phone; my dreams of choking; Michael’s newfound pacifism; and F-287: a dead pigeon with a medal for bravery.