Page 47

When I return, Maddie and her mother are in the kitchen, eating homemade chicken pot pie. I would question if now is the time to eat, but it probably really is the time to eat. All at once I feel ungrounded and untethered from my body.

“Sit down,” Mrs. Prescott says to me, gesturing to a place at the kitchen table across from Maddie. There’s a plate of pot pie and a glass of iced tea. Steam still rises off the food.

“Leftovers,” Mrs. Prescott says, like it’s nothing because it wasn’t cooked fresh in the short span of time it took me to hack up a body. It’s clear that Maddie and her mother have had a long conversation, most likely about me. Maddie can’t look at me, and I don’t blame her.

I’m the reason she had to face the truth about her father—the reason he’s dead.

I flinch as fireworks go off somewhere in the neighborhood.

If they were shooting them before, I didn’t notice—I was too preoccupied.

I was so single-mindedly focused on handling Maddie’s father that I had no room left for any background noise.

I sink numbly into the chair across from Maddie and eat the food her mother prepared.

I wonder only briefly if it’s poisoned. And once that fear feels unfounded, it occurs to me that both my father and Maddie’s were shot to death on the Fourth of July. And both were harming our mothers. Of all the things to have in common.

“Thanks, Mrs. Prescott,” I say to Maddie’s mother, when I finish the food on my plate. I feel almost like a real person again, but the unrelenting fireworks popping off in the background remind me this is all just an illusion.

I stand to leave, and I’m not sure if Maddie is coming or not, but she gets up and follows me out to the car. She gets into the passenger seat, and I start up the SUV.

We’ve driven in silence for about five minutes when she finally speaks. “Where are we taking him?”

The part of me that learned my dark sense of humor from Brian wants to say “Dealer’s choice,” as though such a twisted thing would endear her to me in this moment or somehow lighten the heaviness I feel all around me.

But I know it won’t, so I wisely remain silent.

All at once I feel the weight of Maddie truly seeing me.

Of what she’s now carrying. Of what I’ve been carrying and now can’t even pretend to forget.

Maybe I should have just stayed away from her.

“Aidan?”

“I’m thinking. Is this some place you’re going to want to visit?” I can’t imagine after seeing the grizzly truth that she’s going to want to go visit her father’s makeshift grave and have long conversations with his ghost about her life.

She shakes her head. “No, I just want to know… and be there for it.”

Ocean disposal it is, then.

When we get back to the house after dumping the body, Cora greets me at the door. The entryway smells of bleach.

She throws her arms around me. “Aidan, I’m so glad you’re safe.” She gives Maddie a glare, and I’m sure she thinks I somehow warded off her attack.

“Mrs. Stryker saved my life tonight,” I say.

Cora’s expression softens at this. And I’m glad I don’t have to say anything else about it. She knows better than to ask for details.

“What was done with Sal?” I ask. I really liked him. He was one of my favorites.

“He’s been buried on the property. Nino has been treated. Dr. Romano stitched him up. The bullet went through, took a toe. We aren’t sure about how he’ll recover, if he’ll have permanent nerve damage or be able to walk properly. We’ll have to wait.”

“Thank you, Cora. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

I take Maddie’s hand and guide her back down to the basement. She’s hesitant, but doesn’t fight me. I wonder if she thinks I’m going to lock her up like a prisoner in the secured room. I take her to the incinerator. I remove my clothes and shoes and socks and toss them in.

“Now you.”

She doesn’t argue or fight me. She doesn’t protest or ask how she’ll get back upstairs or if she’ll have to parade naked in front of my guards. She takes her clothes and shoes off and tosses them into the fire.

We stare at each other for a minute. She’s calmed down. She’s finally stopped crying. She just seems… numb now, cold, somehow, and all I want is warm her up and bring her back to life.

We’re both covered in blood. I take her hand and lead her to the bathroom at the other end of the hallway.

I turn the shower on and guide her in with me.

She starts to cry again as I wash the blood off her.

She watches it swirl down the drain, and I know she’s thinking about how that’s the last part of her father.

Or maybe she’s flashing back to that moment when she pulled the trigger.

It’s such a big decision for her, and yet I don’t think she even thought it through. She just acted on instinct.

I can’t pretend to fully understand her struggle. She was thrust into violence in a new way, tonight—a way I’ve been around my whole life. I clean myself up and then I wash her hair.

After Maddie’s hair is rinsed, she turns to face me and puts her hands on my throat, and I wonder if she’s going to try to choke the life out of me.

But she’s just touching me. Her hands run down my throat, over my shoulders, down my arms. She takes first one hand, then the other into hers.

She turns each of my hands over as if she’s expecting to find something.

She traces the outlines of my tattoos. Then her hands are sliding down my chest.

I stand statue-still. I don’t know what she’s doing or what she needs from me. This isn’t exactly a seduction. It’s almost like she’s trying to memorize me in case I somehow disappear, too.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, unsure if I’m even responding to whatever is going on inside her head.

She doesn’t reply. Except for the few words in the car, Maddie hasn’t spoken since her parent’s house.

She moves closer and runs her tongue over the snake tattoo, biting me over the same place she held that knife to my throat. Then she’s kissing down the side of my neck.

I grab her and push her against the shower wall, taking her mouth.

“Is this what you want? Do you want me to fuck it away?” I know I shouldn’t. She’s too sore, but it’s the only way I know to distract her from her new reality.

She looks into my eyes, searching for something. I’m angry, but not at her. I’m angry at her goddamned fucking father for leaving such a tragic mess of her. Of her mother. Of my mother. And God knows how many other poor souls.

Finally, she nods and I crash my mouth against hers.

Our coupling is frantic, just like the first time. The same, yet somehow different. I wanted to go slow with her, to worship her, to care for her, but all I can do is lose myself inside of her and hope that she finds some relief in being lost with me.

We are two broken people trying to fuck our pain away. Such a cliché. How is it that in the space of a single day, I’ve taken her innocence in more than one way and already introduced her to an empty mindless brand of fucking I never wanted for her.

It’s comfort, for both of us, but I’m afraid it’s not nearly as satisfying as either one of us would have liked, and I wonder if I’ve tainted this act between us forever.

When we’re done, I get out and get towels for both of us.

I dry off and hang my towel on a peg. She mirrors me and does the same, then she looks to me for the next thing to do.

I guide her back to the secured room, and once inside I hand her a black T-shirt, pants, boxer briefs, and socks.

She puts them on. They’re far too big on her, but it will get her upstairs to my bed.

I put on a fresh set of clothes as well.

I pick up the red Sharpie and uncap it. I’m about to draw an X through her father’s picture, because I just can’t fucking stop myself from finishing this.

I need the order right now. I need everything to be X’d out and the name to be crossed off.

And I need to go to confession tomorrow and find some way to say what I need to say to claw all of this out of me.

“Aidan, wait.”

I turn, and she’s holding her hand out. I give her the red marker. She draws the X over her father’s photo and the red line through his name. She puts the lid back on and hands it to me.

“I’m sorry for what he did to your mom,” she says.

“When I got there and saw what he did to my mom, it all became really clear to me. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I found you both, but when I saw he was about to kill you, I just…

snapped. But then after I did it, all the good memories came back, and…

it just… it happened too fast. I know he was a bad man.

But he was still my dad, and I’m having a really hard time merging the man I thought he was with the man he actually was.

I don’t know if that makes sense or not.

I’m not mourning who he is… I’m mourning what I’m not sure I ever really had. I just feel… so lost right now.”

I put down the marker and pull her to me. I hold her and press a kiss to her forehead. “I’m so sorry.” It’s all I can say right now. She shouldn’t have had to do this, and maybe I should have let just this one go.

“He had to be stopped. He was hurting her,” she says.

I’m not sure if Maddie means her mom or mine.

“Still, I’m sorry it was you that did it.”

“Me too.”

We go up to my room, get into the bed, and I just hold her until we fall asleep. The next morning, she’s gone, and in her place is a note.

I need some space. I can’t do this. I’m sorry. Please don’t follow me.