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

by Benjamin Stevenson

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once.

Call me a reliable narrator. Everything I tell you will be the truth, or, at least, the truth as I knew it to be at the time that I thought I knew it. Hold me to that.

I didn’t say anything, just nodded. Family is gravity.

The wind was cruel; it found every crevasse in my clothes, invaded and patted me down like I owed it money.

The official story was still that Green Boots had died of exposure. A tragedy, sure, but not one worth cutting a holiday short for. Explaining to the kids on the eight-hour drive back to Sydney why they couldn’t go tobogganing: now, that would be the real tragedy.

People have a habit of saying “That’s all I’m saying” when they’re saying an awful lot, I’ve noticed.

My mother, for all her insistence, didn’t know what family meant.

Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.