Page 50 of What We Bury

It’s not fair to him.

I know it’s not fair to him.

I do it anyway.

And then there’s Sage.

Sage, who makes the door rattle louder than it ever has before.

Sage, who I handed my jacket to so I’d have an excuse to picture her in it, like a teenager, like a man who hasn’t killed eighteen people and then driven home wondering what her mouth would look like saying his name.

Idiot.

Sentimental, reckless idiot.

Evidence once. Weakness twice.

I can’t have this.

Can’t give in.

So I do what I always do. I take all of it—the want, the fear, the ache behind my ribs, the image of her hand in mine, the knowledge that I would ruin myself if she asked the right way—and I shove it down somewhere I don’t have to look at.

Because on the surface, Eli is useful.

Eli runs the group, assigns the watches, makes the calls, keeps the bodies buried and the boys pointed in the rightdirection. Eli teaches children how to read and adults how to pass tests and monsters how to disappear.

Eli does not sit in the dark wanting the one person he should be keeping furthest from himself.

Keep the monster at bay.

I pick up my phone and tap out a text.

Me:

I’m good. At home.

The lie sends blue.

I kill the engine and go inside.

The house is cold. I don’t turn on the lights. I drop my keys on the counter, stand in the kitchen, and look at the phone.

I should call my sister.

Sophie’s in Portland now. She finished college there, stayed, built a life. She’s a graphic designer at a marketing firm, and her biggest client makes organic pet food. She spends her days drawing puppies and kittens, and coming up with clever pet puns that she finds hilarious. I laugh when she does, but really I’m just freaking grateful to hear it because laughter means she survived.

She thinks he got jumped.

Found in the alley behind some bar on the wrong side of town, wallet gone, a mugging that went too far. That’s the story we built—back when we were still learning how to build one, before the rope and the clean exits and the suicide notes. When all I’d done was put an end to a rapist and let Knox and Holden take him somewhere to make it look like bad luck instead of what it was.

The cops barely looked.

A guy like that, in a place like that, at that hour.

Open and shut.

I hope it gave her something, knowing he was gone. I hope it gave her peace.