Chapter Twenty-Four

Now

FEBRUARY 11

PATRICK DODGED THE ONCOMING HEADLIGHTS and kept running, even as a new rush of rain slammed into his face and eyes like tiny bullets. He heard the bike swerve and the crunch of gravel behind him, sending a surge of adrenaline through him, urging him on, almost numbing the ache in his back and delts and neck.

He’d barely slept in about seventy-two hours. He still regretted selling the motorcycle, but at least he had been able to nod off on the bus home. It hadn’t lasted long, though: there’d been a woman behind him with two screaming little kids who took turns kicking the back of his seat and wailing for most of the ride. His jaw was still tense from clenching.

It was far from the bus station to the Donovans’ house, especially in the rain, but he wasn’t going to try hitchhiking for fear of rousing suspicion about his return. And it wasn’t like he could afford to call a cab. He was clean out of cash. Again.

Pawning the ring had gotten him pretty far—all the way to Vermont, and almost a week in. But that turned out to be a shit show. He’d found a “commune” that was more like a halfway house, most of the ratty furniture ridden with lice, the corners of the cupboards lined with trails of mouse turds, and the floors prickly with the remnants of broken bottles. The place basically reeked of piss and cigarettes and body odor, and the handful of other residents depressed him—usually they were staring glassy-eyed at a wall or causing an angry commotion in the hall. As far as he could tell, most of them didn’t have jobs, so he wasn’t sure how they paid for the $11-a-night rent or the booze and dirty-looking pill bottles some of them kept squirreled away.

That had lasted two nights. Then he slept in a barn one night, underneath a pile of old coats, which had been so cold and uncomfortable that he’d spent most of the night awake, shaking.

It sucked, having nowhere to go. There were a lot of things he could’ve tried. Maybe move to a big city to look for work. Try to get his GED, then apply for a scholarship somewhere. He’d even gone to the local library to use the internet to search for jobs, finally, but in a moment of weakness he’d started poking around on social media. That’s how he learned what had really happened the night he left Devil’s Lake. How the Malloy sister died—froze to death, people said, after a nasty, violent fight with a boy she’d trusted.

And that was when he knew he did have a place to go, as hard as it would be to come back. He had to return to Devil’s Lake.

He had to explain his side.

His clothes were drenched by the time he turned down the familiar cul-de-sac and approached the house—dark except for a lamp burning in the window of Uncle Liam’s study. He couldn’t really see in, but there were no shadows, no signs of movement. His great-uncle had probably fallen asleep at his desk, like he sometimes did.

Patrick stood in the yard, the wet, unmown grass straggly from melted snow, as he tried to figure out what to do. It was late. He didn’t want to scare Aunt Diane. He wandered to the front of the house, debating whether to knock and wake them up. Or would it be better to try the back door to see if it was unlocked?

He heard a rustle in the distance and turned. At the edge of the woods, where the street dead-ended in a cement circle, a form was moving among the trees.

Instantly all the hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and the rain suddenly seemed colder, harsher, the dark more dangerous.

He stepped away from the house and into the street, approaching slowly. “Who’s there?” he called out.

No response.

More movement—not hurried or furtive, but deliberate and slow, like whoever was out there was focused on a task. Something shimmered, like wet silver or glass, as the person crouched down. Hiding?

He stepped closer still, hesitant to leave the weak halo of the single street lamp. “Who’s out there?” he asked again.

A twig snapped, and Patrick heard angry mumbling.

By now he was only about ten feet from the start of the woods. Something caught the light again. A pair of glasses.

Patrick’s pulse went into his throat. “Uncle Liam? Is that you?”

More mumbling.

Patrick hurried into the woods and discovered his great-uncle squatting in the rain. In his hands was a—now soaking wet—blue parka. It looked like it was a women’s cut, possibly an old coat of Diane’s.

He bent over his uncle and put his hand on his back. “Come on, Uncle Liam, it’s time to go inside. It’s raining. How long have you been out here, anyway? And let’s take this in too, to dry off.”

Liam looked up at him then, rain misting his glasses. “She might need it.”

“Who might?”

“Sarah. She was out here alone. She was crying.”

“Who’s Sarah?”

Liam swallowed. “We were engaged, you know. She gave me back the ring. Didn’t want it. Beautiful sapphire ring. More than a semester’s tuition, that ring. That was before.” He looked down at his hands, still clutching the corner of the parka, then back up at Patrick, confusion now written on his brow. “Is that you, boy?”

“It’s me. Patrick. Let me help you inside.”

Liam finally put his hand in Patrick’s and allowed himself to be lifted to standing. But when Patrick bent down to pick up the coat, Liam shook his head, resisting. “No. Leave it. She may need it. She was so cold. So cold. She cried herself to sleep.”

“Who did?” Patrick asked, giving up on the coat. He could go back and get it later.

“Sarah.”

A chill ran up his spine. “When was this?”

Liam shook his head. “Don’t know. Winter. Maybe I dreamed it. Just like the fairy tale.”

Patrick’s chest felt like ice. “What did you see, Liam?”

What did you see, Patrick? he heard in his head. Her urgent, pleading voice. The sister.

Liam smiled now. “A princess asleep.”

Patrick swallowed. “You shouldn’t be out in the woods alone at night. It’s not safe,” he said. “For anyone.”

He got his great-uncle to the front door and pushed. It was unlocked. Of course—Liam must have left it that way when he came outside, whenever that was.

Diane—her gray hair loose and wild—stood on the bottom stair in the dark, holding an unplugged lamp as though she was about to swing it like a bat. When she saw Patrick holding up her husband, she gasped, letting the lamp drop as her other hand reached up to cover her mouth. The lamp rolled onto the floor but didn’t break. For some reason, Patrick was grateful. Shattered glass would have been too much.

“What are you—how did you—”

“I came back,” Patrick said, keeping his voice low and steady. “I saw him outside. He was in the trees at the edge of the road. . . .”

His great-aunt seemed to snap out of her shock then. “Well, come in, come in,” she said in a hurried whisper, pulling them both through the doorway, then glancing around the dark yard once before closing the door. “Help me get him to bed.”

For the next thirty minutes, she was all business, ushering Patrick up the stairs with Liam still leaning on him. Handing them both towels to dry off from the rain. Fetching Liam clean, dry pajamas. Finally his great-uncle was in his own bed, snoring, and Patrick turned to his aunt in the darkened bedroom, watching her shoulders slump with exhaustion.

“You should sleep too,” he said. “We can talk in the morning. I mean, if it’s okay for me to . . . for me to stay.”

She took his arm and led him out into the hallway, then sat on the top stair, gesturing for him to sit beside her. She put her head in her hands, and it took him a moment to realize she was crying.

Should he put a hand on her back? What do you do when an old woman cries? Was it his fault? Probably.

“He’s gotten worse,” she said quietly. “We have no help. There’s no one. We’re off the volunteer route. No one will come.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, feeling like his heart would break. “I’m so sorry I left. I know you needed me. It was . . . it was selfish,” he said, suddenly recognizing how true that was. He had fucked up. Again. Maybe he was doomed to never get things right.

Diane shook her head. “I will have to tell them.”

“Tell them?”

“The police.” Her voice was hoarse and tired. “They said—they have to know. They’ve been asking. Were asking. They have a suspect; it’s expected to go to trial, but. But they told me if I ever found out where you were—oh, Patrick, it’s not safe for you here. I don’t know what you’ve done. I don’t know what to do.”

Her soft words fell onto him, heavy—like damp soil collapsing in on itself, becoming a landslide.

“And I know,” she went on. “I know you did something. I know you were . . . you were taking things from us.” She shook her head, not looking at him.

His throat was full of lead. “We’ll talk to them,” he said, forcing the words out past the invisible metal choking him. “Tomorrow. I’ll go in. I promise. I have nothing—” He paused and cleared his throat. “Nothing to hide. I’ll tell them everything.”

He wanted to put an arm around her, but he didn’t. He just sat there beside her, cold all over—cold and damp on the inside, really. In his chest an ache; his whole body a cave, hollow.

Sun poured through the streaked attic windows the next morning, and Patrick squinted, rolling over in bed, forgetting for a moment where he was. Forgetting that he was home. Then remembering.

Then remembering there was no home.

We fought, he recited in his head. I knew she was distressed. Maybe it was my fault she was so upset. I didn’t know what to do.

Was there any point? Would he end up in jail like Boyd? Could it be any worse than the mental prison he’d been living in this past week? He left—he left all of them. Why had he thought they’d want him back?

He closed his eyes again and saw a girl’s face, white with rage, white with the cold, her eyes blazing like hot ice, the forest closing around them, the snow coming down so hard that night. It had been like a snow globe, but a nightmare one. Everything turned upside down, unglued. How the flurries falling in his eyes had unhinged him. It wasn’t just her, daring to intervene, to accuse, to cut into him, into the truth—it was her on top of everything else. On top of the pain in his ribs when he thought of Lilly and what she thought of him now. It was one more person calling him a loser, telling him there was no way out.

He knew that trick. There were two options: let yourself be buried in the snow, weighty and numbing and suffocating—or run. Run, run, run until you’ve burned away the pain, until the place you’re running from isn’t even a speck in the distance anymore, is hardly a pinprick of sadness at the very back of your mind.

So that’s what he’d done. Run.

He got up now and got dressed—his hands shook as he selected a sensible-looking shirt from Liam’s closet. A shirt that said, I swear I didn’t do it. I may even know who did.

Diane had cooked Sunday breakfast, but he couldn’t stomach it. She handed him toast wrapped in a napkin, and her keys; he dropped the former into the trash can out front before getting into her car, which smelled like pine and must.

He pulled out of the driveway, then drove toward the mouth of the cul-de-sac where it spilled straight out onto Route 28.

But he never made it to the police station, or even onto the main road.

Because a big red pickup truck was turning onto his street, blocking his way out.

For a minute, the sun reflected back, glaring, from the windshield, and he couldn’t see who was driving. But then he did. The Taylor kid.

Boyd got out of his truck—he was even taller than Patrick remembered, and not wearing that hunting hat he basically had glued to his head all fall.

He turned off the engine as Boyd approached. Patrick got out of the car, trying to play it cool, even though his brain was screaming—What’s he doing here? “Can I, um, help you?”

Boyd’s open face contorted into what could only be called a sneer. He shook his head. “I mean, you dare to come back around here, like nothing has happened. I had to sit around in jail this whole time.”

“How did you get out?” Bail had been posted at $25,000, from what he’d read. There was no way Innis Taylor—or anyone around here—had that kind of money lying around.

“My dad finally scraped up enough for a bail bond.”

“Oh.” He’d heard of that. A bond where you paid a small percentage of the bail. You could spend the rest of your life paying down the remainder. “Boyd, you should know I never—”

“Let me ask you something,” Boyd said, one foot in front of the other, like he was prepared to lunge. “How do you think it looks? What, are you just gonna come crawling home with your tail between your legs and act like you know nothing? She’s dead, dude.” His voice got hoarser here. Patrick said nothing.

“You ran off without a word that night,” he went on. “I don’t know why you came back, but I’m not fucking leaving this spot until you spit out the truth.”

He was only standing about five feet away, and Patrick was starting to feel claustrophobic, trapped with his back inches from Diane’s car. “I don’t owe you anything, and what I do or don’t know about that night is none of your business. Besides, I only know Lilly. I hardly knew her sisters—”

“Oh, you knew them. You knew Kit, didn’t you? A lot better than you’d like us to think,” Boyd practically spat. “I know what was going on between you two. And I’m not taking the fall for you.”

Patrick’s head was spinning. “Nothing was going on.”

He scoffed. “You would say that now.”

“If you think I was into Kit, you’re high, dude,” Patrick said, feeling heat creep up the back of his neck.

“I didn’t believe it at first,” Boyd went on. “That she could have a thing for you. She said it was wrong. Someone with a history of being a shithead. That could mean a lot of things. Who knows, maybe if you hadn’t disappeared, I never would have guessed.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about, and you really need to get out of my way,” Patrick said, taking a step toward Boyd. Whatever he was rambling about needed to end, and it needed to end now, before things got even more out of hand.

“It’s so obvious now, though,” Boyd said, ignoring him. “She was wearing that stuff from Lilly’s store. The bra. Which you stole.” As he ranted, he moved closer. Patrick could practically feel the hot anger pulsing off him. “It all makes sense now. You were two-timing with both sisters. Maybe Kit found out and wanted to tell. But you didn’t want her to, did you? You fucking wanted to silence her, didn’t you?” Boyd’s face was red, and he was only a couple feet from Patrick now. “Didn’t you?”

“Back off, Boyd. I didn’t steal anything, and I didn’t hurt Katherine Malloy, or anyone. I didn’t touch her. I don’t need to answer to you. If you ask me, you’re the one who wants to fuck all those sisters. Maybe you should be questioning your own motives.”

Boyd’s eyes went wide. “Excuse me, what?”

Patrick’s jaw and fists went hard. “You heard me. You have always had a blatant hard-on for all three Malloy girls, and if anyone was messing around, it’s you. You act like you own them. So step back and get into your truck. This is over.”

He turned to get back into Diane’s car, but Boyd grabbed his shoulder.

“Don’t you ever talk about them that way. You’re scum, you know that?”

Patrick swiveled, pushing his arm away, a little too hard. “I said back off. If I were you, I’d get in your car if you don’t want to get run over.”

“Are you threatening me?” Boyd’s eyes were wide, his neck muscles pulsing.

“Should I be?”

“You’re a fucking loser and a fucking killer, and I’m going to prove it.”

“I said back off,” Patrick said, rearing on Boyd and shoving him.

Boyd returned with a punch, his fist making contact with Patrick’s jaw. Patrick felt his teeth clamp down on his tongue, tasting blood as he reeled, stumbling back against the car.

He pushed himself up to standing and lunged at Boyd, throwing himself at him without thinking. He grabbed Boyd’s shoulders and butted his forehead into Boyd’s face.

Blood spurted from Boyd’s nose as Patrick watched him fall to the ground, catching himself on his elbow and clutching his face. “Whatthefuck,” he kept saying.

Shaking, Patrick got into his car and drove off, away from Boyd, who was still lying on the pavement in the cul-de-sac. He skirted the truck, barely missing the fender, and squealed out onto 28.

He couldn’t go to the cops now. Not like this. He stared at his bloodied fist, wrapped around the steering wheel. His jaw killed, and he could see in the rearview mirror that a yellowy-purple bruise was already blooming. His hip hurt from where something—the car handle, maybe—had dug into his skin.

Returning to Devil’s Lake had been a huge mistake.

He was tempted to hit the gas hard and get out of town again, keep driving and never return.

He would’ve done it, too, but even as Diane’s old car started to sputter, he knew he had nowhere to go. Devil’s Lake felt like his fate. He had to come back and face it head-on.