Page 39 of Haven't Killed in Years

He danced in place, incapable of stillness. “There’s someone in my trunk.”

“Someone, like a human being?”

“Yes, like a human being.” He leaned in. “A fucking dead body.” He shook his hands out like the words had landed on his fingertips.

“Oh my God. Why is there a dead body in your trunk? Did you kill someone?!”

“No, I didn’tkillher.” He groaned. “Please help me. Please don’t call the cops.” He scratched at his arms like he was tripping, and I hoped that he was just hallucinating something awful.

“What do you wantmeto do?” I asked.

“I need to put it in the kiln and you’re here having a Girl Scout meeting.” He peered back over my shoulder at Elyse with the audacity to be annoyed.

“You brought the body here?”

“Itoldyou, it’s in my trunk.” He reached up and seized both of my arms. “You need to get rid of Elyse.”

I rotated a hair to peek at her sitting there, watching. “Okay. Bring your car around to the back and I’ll let you in once she’s gone.”

“Thank you,” he said, spinning around and running to his car.

I went back inside and took slow, awkward steps toward Elyse. “I have to help Porter with something. Is it all right if we call it a night?”

She stood and met me halfway. “What happened? Do you need my help?” She reached up and touched my arm. I shivered from the sensation of her hand on my skin. Why was she touching me? She used her thumb to wipe at something. Porter had left a streak of blood on my arm.

I moved to scrub at it, getting her hand out of the way. “No, it’s okay. He got in a car accident and is pretty shaken up. I’m going to help him get home.”

“Whatever you say.” She smirked in an insulting, accusatory way, but instead of pushing it, she brushed past me and out the front door—back into whatever shadow she had emerged from. I wanted to stare at the last place she was visible, transfixed, focused on the meaning of it all, but I couldn’t stand around being a Jane Austen character when I had to help get rid of a dead body—reality, the enemy of romanticism.

- - - - -

I propped open theback door as Porter reversed his ancient car toward me. I met him at the trunk, where he inserted the key, then stopped. “Are you going to be okay seeing this?” he asked.

“Just get it over with.” What I meant wasYes, please. It had been so long since I had seen a dead body—a whole one anyway.

He popped the trunk and my throat closed.

She was loosely wrapped in a tarp and her frizzy auburn-and-gray hair was congealed with blood.

“It’s Reanne Haggerty,” Porter said.No shit.

“Who did this?” I choked out. “Why do you—”

“Just help me, okay?” He reached into the trunk and grabbed my mother by her armpits. “I’m going to puke,” he said, gagging and burying his nose and mouth in his shoulder for a moment. “Grab her ankles,” he ordered as he regained control of his stomach.

“Stop,” I said, and he paused. “We’re not bringing her inside.”

Porter released the body, but glared at me for further explanation.

“We can’t put her in the kiln. For a million reasons.”

His stare was so blank. It wasn’t because he was dumb. He wasn’t dumb. It was because he was incapable of thinking logically anymore.

“Will she fit? Does it get hot enough? Is it going to smell? How long does it take? Will there be traces of her everywhere? Porter, you can’t dispose of a body in the place where you work. You might as well try burying her in your backyard.”

He sighed, bringing his hands to his face and rubbing them up and down. “What should I do, then?”

I took a step toward his trunk like an answer would present itself. I stood over her body. Her throat was slit—amateurish, too messy, a terrifying death, a millisecond of time when you think maybe the knife missed before you start catching your own blood in your hand.