Page 103 of You'll Be Sorry

Another minute passes in the silence. Then:

“I know this place. I’ve been here before.”

“Yes.”

“I know you. I’ve seen you before.”

“Yes.”

“You…you know my parents aren’t my birth parents—you asked where I was really from. How would you know such a thing?”

In answer, I lean forward, study him intently. He’s in there, I can see it. A fragment of a dream, blurred by the passage of time. How long, I wonder, has it been since he’s truly known himself? What a sad thing to take from another, even with the best of intentions.

“The first time we met, you were looking for a witch.”

His breath hitches slightly. I see a flicker of recognition.

“You were a child on a childish adventure. But in my pettiness and anger, I took it too seriously. Because I knew of the witch even then. I’d found an old diary among my grandfather’s papers. Rita Louise Light, a young woman alone in the world, who came to this village looking for shelter. The locals turned on her instead. ‘Red witch, blue witch, black or white,’” I sing softly.

Another hitch in his breath.

“When is a song not a song?” I answer my own question bitterly. “When it’s a testimony to one town’s treachery. The haves and the have-nots. Your family. And mine.”

Another flare of recognition.

“I sent you home with a message for your father. Then, out of spite, I delivered the journal itself, strategically ‘hidden’ for your mother to find. I didn’t realize everything I was starting that night. Two hundred years later, I thought only of justice for a poor lost soul. It turned out, however, there were secrets, and then there weresecrets. Notes buried within notes,” I murmur. “Is it coming back to you now?”

I bend closer, tracing the line of his jaw with my fingertips, then the thick, ropy scar above his left ear. A scar I know well, having tended to it that one terrible evening and for a full week afterward.

He doesn’t pull away, but shakes his head in denial. These things I’m saying, they can’t be real. I simply wait until the truth doesn’t so much dawn on him as well up from the core of his being.

“What happened?” he demands fiercely. “Just fucking tell me what happened.”

And now, I must disappoint.

“I wish I knew. I arrived only at the end, not the beginning. I saw what happened, but not who did it. And so”—I shrug a bit helplessly—“with the best of intentions, I did my best to make up for my mistake. Because I knewit wasn’t over. The past is never truly the past in a place like this. But don’t worry, I also forged a plan.”

I rise to my feet, crossing to the gun rack mounted above the front door. My father’s favorite rifle. I check to make sure it’s fully loaded, then return to the man seated before my woodstove. I gently set the .22 down beside him.

“I’ve spent the past thirty years hunting through historic land deeds, looking for the well in question. When that failed, I pored over topographical maps and surveys to identify where sources of groundwater should be, followed by endless hours crisscrossing with a dowsing rod. Until one day, digging down, hitting wood. Carefully removing a top layer of sod to discover after so many years…‘Ding dong bell, the witch is in the well.’” I exhale slowly. “And now, here we are. The moment has come to expose this place once and for all. The respectable citizens who harbor the vilest kind of secrets. The high and mighty who’ve spent generations playing down and dirty. The pedigreed families who’ve prospered at the expense of others. You and I, we know these things. You and I and Rita Light, we deserve justice.

“Even if it means burning this town to the ground.”

I nudge the rifle closer.

“William,” I murmur. “It’s time to come home again.”

32

You thinkIhurt the Dixons? Don’t be ridiculous,” Betty snapped. “I would never!”

“I know you’ve been keeping secrets—”

“Please, who doesn’t? Rather a giant leap from there to mass murder, don’t you think!”

“What was your relationship with my father thirty years ago?”

“Friends.”