Jennifer is there, bones now, wrapped in plastic and laid to rest without fanfare, without a headstone, without a priest to give her any last rites.
The ground was hollowed after we buried her, no matter how much dirt I piled on top of her final resting place. No matter how many hours I knelt in that dirt and prayed for her soul. No matter how many nightmares she visited me in, her big eyes imploring me to save her.
The ground never let me forget that she was there. Their baby rests there too, in a heart-shaped box that used to hold my mother’s wedding dress, a soul too small to have ever survived the violent way it entered this world.
* * *
IT’S COLD TONIGHT. This winter was just as harsh as the last one, but spring is here, now. Soon it will warm up. Luckily we have the insurance money from mom’s life insurance policy, something that keeps the heat going twenty-four hours a day and lets us pay for firewood instead of stealing it.
Leo’s stretched out on the couch, his big hands looking huge as he pats our baby girl on the back.
She’s only a month old, something we hadn’t planned for, but something that is so beautiful, so perfect, it’s made me happier than I could have ever imagined on those lonely nights when it was just Damon and I between these four walls.
I could stare at these two my whole life, the way her ear rests on his chest, the slow breath that they’ve somehow managed to synchronize, the way she looks every bit his and nothing of mine. I might have carried our daughter in my belly for nine months, but she belongs to her father.
We’ve talked about moving, but we both agree that it’s better to stay here. To keep an eye on things. We wouldn’t want anybody else digging around the property and finding things that are best left buried.
Leo moved the old piano away from the window, but I made him put it back. He thought I wouldn’t want to stare at that spot below the chestnut tree as I played, but he’s wrong. Apart from my baby girl and my Leo, that spot fills all the empty spaces inside me. It comforts me on those cold nights when they’re asleep and the memories come flooding back. We spend most of our nights like this; Leo holding little Grace while I play for them. He told me once how it wasn’t the noise he feared in prison, but the quiet. He doesn’t like the numbing silence, so I try to fill it for him. Between my fleeting music skills and the way Grace cries for food every few hours, we have him covered.
Sometimes I lie on top of the spot where they’re buried, in the night, in the weak yellow light the porch lamp casts off. Now that it’s spring, the snow has melted, and the grass on top of them is thick and healthy. The ground does not hollow anymore with the weight of Jennifer. Now it is smooth and flat, and Damon is with her.
All I ever wanted was somebody to love. To love me.
Leo thought I was crazy when I insisted on digging right down until I hit bone. What did a year in the ground do to somebody’s body? Would the flesh be gone? Would they just be shiny white bones?
Please don’t leave me here, Cassie.
There was nothing shiny about Jennifer Thomas and her year-buried body. It was just dirt and bones and flesh and the outfit she’d been wearing when we put her in the earth. Leo wanted to shove Damon’s body into the hollow and be done with it, but I couldn’t bear the thought of the three of them spending eternity separated by dirt and rocks and a thin sheet of plastic. So I unwrapped her, and we put her next to him, the tiny heart-shaped box on top, and when Leo saw Jennifer’s decomposed corpse he cried.
All I ever wanted was somebody to love. To love me.
You’re probably wondering why I went to any effort to bury them together. Why I cried. Why I loved him in my own strange way. I didn’t love the man who killed my mother and sent Leo to prison, no. It was the man he could have been; the man he would have been if he hadn’t stepped into that van. If he hadn’t been a boy on a milk carton. I think I would have loved that boy very much if things had been different.
More than anything — even in death — I didn’t want him to be alone. He should be with his child, with the girl he loved in the only way he knew how. With violence, and with a finality that was as brutal as it was unwavering.
But I can’t think about Damon anymore. I can’t think about my mother, or my father, or Ray. I can’t think about Adelie Collins and the way she died of a broken heart. I have to think about my family now. My husband. Our daughter. Everything I’ve ever done has been for them, for us, for this.
I didn’t know the depth of love until I stared into my daughter’s brilliant eyes. The color of the ocean, the color of hope, the color of everything I ever dreamed of having. Her eyes are so bright it makes me want to cry.
What big eyes you have, Gracie. Leo swears they’re turning green like his, like mine, but when I look at her, all I see is lazulite blue.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
LEO
“You sure I can take the car?”
Pike’s standing beside me, the weight of every terrible secret we share in the air that hangs between us. He looks how I feel; older, hollowed out, a husk of everything he used to be. I wish for a moment that I could unsee all the things we’ve been privy to these past years, but that would be like wishing away our lives and settling into the same death that has already claimed so many people.
“Yeah, course. It’s not exactly a family car.”
Pike snorts. “Got that right.”
“You sure you’ll be okay with the Honda?” Pike presses, as we look out the kitchen window at Cassie and her picnic companion. We both know he’s not asking about the fucking Honda, he’s asking about Cassie. Will I be okay with the woman who lied for a year and more, who kept a grown man, a murderer, in our attic right above the spot where we slept every single night? I know my brother, and I know that the weight of his concern for me hangs around his neck like a noose.
“Pike,” I say quietly. “You go. I’ll be fine here. Better than fine. I’m happy here.”
“Happy.”
“Cautiously optimistic?”
“I don’t trust her,” Pike says, heat in his words as his eyes narrow at Cassie, outside. “You can’t tell me you trust her, Leo.”
I shrug. “Don’t have to trust somebody to love them.”
“Really? Is that what she said when she told you she loved him?”
Blood rises in my cheeks at the mention of Damon. I count to five in my head as I breathe in. Onetwothreefourfive. I hold for two. Exhale.
“She didn’t love him.”
Pike shakes his head, hands stuffed in his jeans. I know what he wants to say. He wants to remind me about the way Cassie cried and pleaded and screamed when I found Damon and refused her any more visits upstairs. When I coaxed the truth out of her, in between contractions that had her doubled over and vomiting from the pain. When I filled the birthing pool and she begged me to take some water up to him in the attic so that he wouldn’t die. And me, the bastard I am, refused.
I let that motherfucker starve in a pine box with nothing but air to fill his empty stomach, with nothing but the salty sweat on his palms to chase away the thirst. I let him die up there, alone, and the only thing I regret is that I wasn’t able to torture him first. He took everything from us. Everything. So when Cassie was pushing and pushing and screaming his name, pleading for me to help him, she didn’t mean it. She couldn’t possibly have meant it. Pain does strange things to a person.
Pike opens his mouth as if to speak. Closes it again. Good choice, brother.
He wants to run away from here, I can tell. He’s not just edgy, he’s terrified. He’s scared of this house, of what lies just outside, of Cassie. He’s scared of the straw-haired girl we grew up with, the girl who cried when we caught butterflies in jars and insisted on freeing them; My baby brother, all six-five of him, is scared of the tiny girl outside who used to steal his cigarettes and flush them down the toilet to save him from getting lung cancer.
I mean, I get it. If I didn’t know her so well, I’d be scared of her, too.
“That baby’s got her daddy’s eyes,” Pike says quietly beside me. We’re standing at the kitchen counter, the fields green and stretching out for miles beyond our property. I hesitated to call it mine for so long, but I’ve been here for over a year now, and my name is on the title deed, so I suppose it’s mine. Ours.
Unlike our daughter, who might be ours, but is definitely not mine.
Pike’s words are like a stab in the heart, a rip through the careful web we’ve spun all around us. Besides Cassie and me, Pike is the only one who knows the truth. And even though I know Cassie would never do anything to hurt him, the fact that he knows so much makes my skin crawl. I don’t ever want him to say the wrong thing to her. I don’t ever want him to get mad and threaten her. No, what I want — what I need — is for him to be gone. I want him to have a chance. A life. Away from here.
“All kids are born with blue eyes,” I reply, but my words lack any real conviction.
“That’s not your kid, bro,” Pike says. “You know that, right?”
“Of course I know that,” I hiss.
Pike scoffs. “You’re gonna raise his kid in his house while he’s buried in the fucking yard?”
I turn and stare at my brother, in his bright green eyes, eyes that match my own. He must see the intent in my gaze, the absolute conviction that I have to protect these girls from the world because he takes a step back and nods. “Okay, man, whatever. But don’t get complacent, okay? Don’t you ever forget what she’s capable of.”
I won’t forget. I won’t be fooled again. “Thanks for looking out for me, bro. You think you don’t have it in you, but you do.”
A small smile threads across Pike’s face. Until he looks back to Cassie and the baby, who are done outside and are headed right for the house, and us.
“Your wife is a dangerous woman,” Pike says softly, plastering a proud uncle smile on his face as Cassie opens the door and he holds his arms out for Grace. She beams, handing Grace over to my brother and curling herself into my side. I let her, wrapping my arm around her small frame, my skin hot against hers.
“Did you tell your brother?” Cassie asks, poking me in the ribs with the tip of her finger. It tickles and I pull away, giving her a playful swat on the arm.
“I was waiting for you,” I say, my face smiling and my heart racing. Cassie takes that as an invitation, disappearing into the living room and coming back with a photograph in her hands. She hands it to Pike, who seems is a natural at holding babies and juggling other items at the same time. His face goes blank, and I can tell he’s struggling.
“We just found out,” I say, taking Grace from him so he can study the picture properly. “Two babies in less than a year. Can you imagine?”
“Irish twins, just like you two,” Cassie adds.
Pike feigns excitement. “Congratulations, guys,” he says, handing me the ultrasound picture of my son, the son currently the size of a peach and growing like a weed inside my crazy wife’s womb. The son who was conceived well after we buried Damon, the son who is my child by DNA, not just by my complacency.
We make small talk for what seems like an acceptable amount of time and then it’s time for Pike to leave. I’m excited for him, and sad, so sad, like it’s the end of an era. I know it won’t be, he’s only going as far as Reno, and then who knows from there. He’ll be back. He’s still bound to our mother by some invisible chain of guilt that I managed to saw off a long time ago; he’ll be back.
I watch him flinch minutely when Cassie hugs him. If she notices, she doesn’t show it. She has become the master of storytelling, of make-believe, playing the part of Cinderella after the slipper has been fitted. We live in another man’s castle and we make believe that this life is something we can bear; we make believe that we are normal people with a normal child, that there are no bodies buried beneath the hollow where my wife enjoys long picnics in the afternoon sun. I don’t have to make believe that I love her more than the sun, though, and it’s the ferocity of my love for her that makes all of the other things possible.
We stand out on the grass by the road and watch Pike drive my Mustang off into the afternoon, my eyes fixed on the white racing stripe I so meticulously restored. I watch until he’s a speck in the distance. I blink, he’s gone. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Cassie turns to me and smiles, threading her fingers through mine. “I hope he finds somebody to love,” she says dreamily, “the way you and I love each other.”
I smile and nod, kissing her cool forehead. I hope Pike never finds somebody to love the way Cassie and I love each other. I hope he finds a normal kind of love, not one that drives you to do things you never dreamed you were capable of.
“Are you sad?” Cassie asks.
“About my brother, or about my car?” I joke, but my heart pinches at the thought.
I am not sad but I carry this sadness with me; the sadness of Jennifer and Karen and my sister and my brothers; the sadness of my mother and how nobody, none of them, ever, had a chance. I carry the sadness of Cassie. Of her mother. All these people, I am sad for, and if I think about their sadness too long, I start to drown in it.
I take a sleepy Grace from Cassie and carry her to the porch. Together we rock in the old chair and I stare down at her face, utterly detached, willing myself to love her. She’s my daughter. For better or worse. I will love her. I have to.
Later, when Pike’s long gone and Grace has passed out in her bassinet after a breast milk binge, Cassie finds me in the bedroom. I’m freshly showered and naked, save for the thin top sheet I’ve pulled over myself while I read.
“This is really fucked up,” I say, holding up the book she’s been reading to Grace, Where the Wild Things Are. “It’s about a kid who runs away because his mother doesn’t feed him? And then these monsters love him so much they’d rather eat him than let him go?”
She laughs, taking the book from my hands and setting it on the nightstand. “It’s just a book,” she says, crawling into my lap. “Besides, it’s a classic.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Really? It’s old and it smells like wet dog.”
“Mr. Bentley,” she says, one hand on my throat, “I don’t want to talk about kid’s books right now. I want to talk about what’s under these sheets.”
“Anything for you, Mrs. Bentley,” I say, moving the sheets away, pulling her against my cock. I’m ready for her and she’s ready for me, no panties under her summer dress for me to contend with. She lets out a small sigh that sounds like happiness when I enter her, as she starts to ride me. I have to be gentle with her. She’s only just given birth, less than three months ago, and now she’s carrying my son. Some girls like it rough, but I can’t be rough with my pregnant wife. I thread my hands into her hair and pull her face to mine. I close my eyes and kiss her and she tastes like strawberry yogurt and summer rain. She tastes like all the things I never thought I would have again.
Your wife is a dangerous woman. Pike’s words come back to haunt me. My wife might be a dangerous woman, but I love her anyway. None of this was her fault, not really. At least, that’s what I tell myself as Cassie takes my hands and places them on her waist, her dress gone somewhere while my eyes were closed, her eyes locked on mine. My thumbs find the slight swell of new life in her belly as I grip her hips, her milk-filled breasts pressed against my bare chest, and I wonder how anyone could ever call her dangerous. And then I remember the bodies in the yard, and I close my eyes again.
CHAPTER SIXTY
CASSIE
I wish Steven Randolph had just killed me, Damon said to me once. His delivery was stunning, a blow to my chest, a bruising punch right in my blue-black heart.
I scrubbed the box and the attic as best I
can after we buried Damon. The attic of lost souls, I thought, as I knelt on knees that were still tender from all the hours I knelt and panted and cried in labor just days before.
Afterward, I sat in the box up in the attic, cross-legged, no light except the thin slice of weak sunlight that filtered in through the high window.
I held one of Damon’s milk cartons in my hands, turning it over and over.
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY? It screamed at me.
Yes. I have seen him. It took me a long time, a year and more, but I broke the man into enough pieces to reveal the child.
I have seen this boy. Lazulite eyes and a dimple in each cheek when he smiled.
He was beautiful.
I thought back to all the nights we spent in here. Nights when Leo was deep in a drugged sleep, safely downstairs, nights when I would pull more secrets from the man who almost broke me completely. How intimately I got to know him, to understand him, to hate him.
How sorry I felt for him.
How much I wanted to taste his pain the way he had tasted mine, how fucking heartsick he’d made me.
He’d already tasted of his own death when I kissed his mouth, dry lips and sunken cheeks, but his body still worked just fine. It still longed for me, hard and rigid as I unbuttoned his dirty jeans and reached inside. His eyes went wide as he shrank back from me. I think he was expecting violence. Maybe expecting that I’d come good on my threat and cut his dick off like I had promised so many times to do.
“Cassie,” he breathed, muscles still sinew, eyes still full of violent love for me, all for me.
His eyes were wet as I took from him what he’d taken from me.
After, I locked the attic door and checked it twice. I took the stairs leisurely, still full of him. I went into the kitchen and drank a glass of milk.
I went upstairs and slept beside Leo, the sticky smear of my old lover still wet against my thighs.
Going mad doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a process. It’s girls in wells and mothers in comas and boyfriends in prison. It’s Damon King in your bed, in your head, and then finally, in the prison you constructed for him.
Gun Shy Page 27
