I pointed Leo toward the deck on our right, off what was probably the master bedroom, and in a few strides, we were there, even as I heard a door slam.
I scanned the deck, praying for a crawl space, a nook, a hole in which to hide, even as my heart seized at the thought of again being wedged between earth and wood. But the deck was built better than my coffin had been.
The wind picked up, and my hair whipped into my eyes. I squinted to see.
We had to run, an all-out sprint, and even as I decided this, Leo glanced toward the field, and I knew he recognized this as the best option too.
I heard footfalls, and I whispered, with urgency, “Go,” pointing Leo away from the sound.
Then my son was gone, but I stayed—making the same choice I had earlier, my life for my son’s—and Brooklyn was there, holding her gun and looking very unhappy to see me.
Brooklyn fired, missing as I jerked right. When she shot again, the bullet tore into my left shoulder. Before she could take a third shot, I barreled into her. I grabbed her, my arms rigid, now close enough to smell the lavender and sweat that clung to her skin, then buried my teeth in her neck.
Brooklyn howled and lost her grip on the gun. It tumbled, but pressed together as we were, it became wedged between us. She clawed at my injured shoulder, but the pain wasn’t nearly as heavy as my rage. I took a step back, and the weapon clattered to the ground.
Brooklyn and I locked eyes, and we both lunged for the gun. She hadn’t had to dig herself from the earth and she still had two good shoulders, but I had my fury. A second later, I also had the gun.
“Dee kept your picture on the wall even after you were taken. Did you know that? She spent thousands on detectives, trying to find you. You weren’t even hers. I was hers, by blood, and I was here. But it’s you she wanted, Megan.”
Buying time or eliciting sympathy, I didn’t know, but I had neither to give. The anger wouldn’t allow it, at least not for her. My compassion I saved for those she had hurt. Killed.
I pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Out of bullets.
Shock dawned in Brooklyn’s eyes, then something else. I’d seen that look often enough in patients, so I knew what her next move would be.
She turned from me and ran.
48
Brooklyn stumbled through the field, and I pursued. She might have spent her childhood hiding, but I wouldn’t let her hide now. Though oaks, pines, and cypresses lined the property, she wouldn’t have time to reach their shelter. I half expected her to stop at the shed where I’d found Carver—where she had kept my husband before killing him—but she lurched past without slowing.
There was only one other place she could be headed. The old creamery. The paint had flaked off the long-abandoned building, exposing the galvanized metal beneath. Plywood blinded most of the windows, though a couple of cracked panes remained.
Brooklyn raced through the open door only a few seconds before I did.
Creatures dead and hidden fouled the air inside the creamery. I heard their live brethren scuttling inside the pipes nested on the walls. My lungs seared, dust coating my throat. The moon slanted in through cracks in the ceiling and the walls, everything washed in an eerie white light.
Brooklyn rounded a piece of machinery that looked like it had once been used for bottling, several rollers on its conveyor belt missing. Her footfalls became slow, sloppy, and I pulled within inches.
We faced each other, and I could read her determination to kill me in the grim set of her mouth, the flare of her nose.
My own hands balled into fists. My medical training had taught me to save lives, but it had also given me insight into how to end them. Still, it was one thing to know where to strike for maximum injury, but it was another to reach those vulnerable spots.
Brooklyn knew the fragile parts too. She lunged, so fast I didn’t see it coming, and slammed her fist into my temple. My vision clouded and I rocked on my heels, but I remained upright. I struck back, aiming for kidneys.
She stepped back, toward the machinery, planting her feet wide, shoulders rising to protect her neck. Then she came at me again, and though I saw it coming, the punch landed on the right side of my face. My eyes widened and I shook my head, straining to focus.
To conserve energy, I waited, studying her shoulders, watching her hands. When she took another swing, her shoulders fell away from her neck, leaving it exposed. I drove my fist into the side of her neck, toward her carotid artery, and she shuddered. She tilted slightly, wobbly now, and I hit her again, this time in the base of her throat. She crashed against the conveyer belt, and it was only the support of the machinery that kept her off the floor.
She straightened and grabbed her neck, gasping. I swung for her kidneys again, my aim truer this time. Her body went slack, and she crashed onto the ground, her head landing hard.
She wiped away the blood that seeped from a cut on her forehead. “You can fight, I’ll give you that,” she said, her words slurred. “Which kinda surprises me, since you’ve never had to fight for anything your whole fuckin’ life.”
With that, she got up. How the hell was she still able to stand?
I swung again, but it lacked power and aim. Brooklyn charged, her head tensed, her shoulders squared to take the impact, but I twisted, throwing my elbow toward her throat. Missed. Stumbling but somehow still on my feet. Staring into the face of the woman who had killed my husband, I surrendered to rage. I didn’t intend to stop Brooklyn. I wanted to destroy her, until she was nothing more than a sack of snapped tendons and broken bones.
Her eyes burned, her intensity matching mine, but I had the reach. When she swung, it fell short, leaving her exposed. I exhaled—one small, sharp breath—focusing all of my energy into my fist. I snapped my elbow. The blow landed with a crunch.
As she stumbled backward, she grabbed the machinery for balance.
I took a step, but her next question stopped me. “Did you know there was a second grave?”
She smiled then, a mirthless smirk as cool as the air but not nearly as cold as her eyes. A recent memory returned—at the grave, I remembered a scratching I thought came from animals.
“Close to yours in fact, though on the other side of the tree,” she said. “Even if Sam wasn’t dead earlier, he certainly is now.”
My heart shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. The skittering I’d heard. The scratching I’d ignored. Had it been Sam?
New grief settled in my chest so it became a chore to breathe. But I wasn’t done. I felt a simmering, quiet rage still there.
Brooklyn had meant to distract with her revelation, and it worked. For a second, I couldn’t move, torn between pursuing Brooklyn and running to my husband’s grave. By leaving Sam behind, I was as much a killer as Brooklyn.
In that moment, I wanted to choose Sam, I should’ve chosen Sam, but adrenaline and anger wouldn’t allow that. I stumbled forward, and Brooklyn’s arm shot out, a rusty knife nicking my right side. So she hadn’t been holding on to the machinery for balance. She had been looking for a weapon she had stashed. Growing up as she had, it made sense she had weapons hidden here.
Pain surged, and with it, anger. I blocked Brooklyn when she came at me again. My toe rammed a piece of metal that jutted from the ground, but it was just another ache I was beyond feeling. I grabbed the hem of her T-shirt, balling it in my fist and pulling her toward me.
Brooklyn thrashed, fabric tearing, but I held on, trading shirt for arm, twisting until she dropped the knife. Something popped. Shoulder or elbow? Didn’t matter. It was hers, not mine. We fell sideways, my shoulder ramming a stack of rotting crates.
But Brooklyn took a harder hit, her head bouncing off the metal edge of the machinery. She lay there, as she had that night on the trail. I had saved her then. She tried to sit up, and my hand twitched. Even now, I wanted to offer it to her. But I couldn’t. She might come for me, for my family. I had to make sure. The gun might’ve failed me, but
years of youthful brawling wouldn’t. When Brooklyn started moving again, I kicked her, my side throbbing in unison with my shoulder, until she stopped.
I shouted for Leo as I stumbled from the creamery, but I was really just shouting into the wind. Leo might have made it to the road, or he might be hidden somewhere that muffled my shouts. I could only hope he would hear me and follow to the centuries-old valley oak at the property’s perimeter, because I wasn’t certain I had enough strength to dig Sam up by myself.
My hair whipped my face as I returned to the gardening shed near the house, found a shovel, then set out across the property as fast as I was able. When I pulled to a stop beneath the old oak, I welcomed the wind’s chill but not its force, which flicked leaves and the occasional acorn from the branches overhead.
As I ran, I had prayed to find the second grave empty, mounds of dirt beside it, Sam waiting at its edge. But when I reached the grave, it remained undisturbed.
Beneath the tree, I started digging. Even with the meager shovelfuls of earth I managed, my arms burned. I listened for sirens, prayed for them, but I didn’t slow, even as my heart rattled inside my chest.
A hand pressed against my back, and I jumped, reminded of the last time I had been touched in the same way at this place. My throat clenched, and I brushed away imaginary dirt.
This time, it wasn’t a man pushing me into my grave. It was Leo. My beautiful boy.
I had been so focused on my task, I hadn’t heard his approach. His face was slicked with sweat as if he had been running.
“The police?” I asked, and he nodded.
I handed him the shovel and fell to my knees.
Though he didn’t know for certain why he was digging, Leo worked with an intensity I could no longer match. Even on my knees, I felt wobbly, but I scraped dirt from the grave as best I could. I noticed my fingers were raw, but they didn’t hurt. Other parts of me were numb, too, including my head, and I fought the urge to vomit.
Sam’s grave was even shallower than mine had been, and Leo quickly expanded the hole I had made, exposing the wood.
I pointed at the box, too weak to stand, let alone strike the wood myself. Leo understood. He brought the shovel down on the makeshift coffin’s lid, the wood splintering more with each whack.
I bowed my head over the rim of the hole to listen, sweat dripping into my eyes, but I heard nothing. Blackness bled into the edges of my vision, followed by flashes of light. Blue and red light. I thought I heard sirens, too, but the wind whistled loudly against my ears.
Was Sam alive? Or were we too late?
There were men and women surrounding us now, in uniform mostly but some, like Detective Ray Rico, wearing suits. I’d been so focused I had not seen them arrive.
Earlier that night, Red had told me how Natalie had nearly perished beneath a tree the night she’d given birth, saved only to die later in that grave. Now, they were all dead. Natalie. Dee. Carver. Probably Brooklyn. With so much blood soaked into this land, how could anything but tragedy come to those born here?
Detective Rico loomed beside me, his brown suit streaked with dirt a shade lighter as he helped Leo and a uniformed officer pry at the lid. Strange to see Rico disheveled like that. No tie, either. Stranger to see the concern on his face.
Then together, they grabbed the lid and pulled. We could see him now—Sam.
I noticed Sam’s left hand. His ring finger. That was the part of him that moved first. Then I saw the stretcher, and the paramedics who brought it, before finally succumbing to the void.
49
Later, Detective Ray Rico told me why Brooklyn did what she did.
While searching for Sam, I’d heard horrible stories of Dee’s abuse, but others came out afterward. Most involved dark places and objects that could break skin, but the emotional abuse was just as scarring.
Almost all of the stories involved the boxes she made for Natalie and, later, Brooklyn. Over years of abuse, the plywood became stained with blood and urine, the inside of the lids marked with the scratches made by two desperate girls. Natalie was buried in her box, and Brooklyn tried to bury me in hers.
Usually, the girls would remain confined for three days. I got it now. The notes: 3. 2. 1. A countdown, but also payback. We endured three days as horrible as the ones Brooklyn had suffered. She wanted us to lose everything, as she had.
Three was also the number of girls at the house that night, but I’m not sure if that played into it. Maybe that was just coincidence.
Brooklyn didn’t find freedom until Dee’s death in August. For someone whose liberty was so hard-earned, Brooklyn threw it away easily enough. She survived, but she’s in prison now. I’m still not sure how I feel about that. Damon survived, too, and I’ve heard they still communicate. Can’t say I’m surprised.
According to Rico, after Dee’s death, Brooklyn found the photos of Natalie she had shown me. She also found the notes Ernie had given Dee before her death—notes that led Brooklyn to us: me, the woman who had been saved at her expense; and Carver, the man Brooklyn believed should’ve saved her.
For whatever reason, in Dee’s things, there was no mention of Red. Maybe Dee didn’t know he took me. Likely she thought Carver had, since he had been at the house that night too. Either way, I’m grateful for that omission. After all, despite everything, he’s still my dad.
50
The day Sam came home, Audrey insisted on being in charge of the decorations, which is how the entryway wall had come to be filled with half-empty balloons. Who knew there were so many shades of pink?
Leo had been put in charge of the tape dispenser. Each time Audrey made him redo the design, he complained, as older brothers were supposed to, but his complaints lacked conviction. The balloon heart grew more crooked with each attempt. Sam would love it.
“This one needs more tape.” Audrey pointed to a sagging balloon already secured with three strips.
“Yeah, ’cause that’s gonna help,” Leo said, but he pulled off a fresh piece.
My cake hadn’t turned out any better—I blamed my bum shoulder—but it was handmade and it was chocolate, so even if it sloped, Sam would love that too.
The evil that had entered our lives hadn’t made it over this threshold, and I would continue to force it back with pink balloons and chocolate cake and this. All of this.
“Done?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Because we’ve got a cranky patient waiting in the car.”
“Are you crying?” Leo asked. He turned to Audrey. “Mom’s actually crying over some stupid balloons.”
“Of course she is,” Audrey said. “She’s Mom.” As if that explained everything. I supposed, in the wake of what had happened, it did. But in this house, I only let the happy tears fall.
Audrey stood back, looked at the wall, and nodded once. “Done,” she said.
At the car, I helped Sam from the passenger seat. He made the prerequisite joke about sponge baths meant to distract me from the way he winced when he got to his feet.
Only happy tears, I reminded myself.
I continued to feel guilt over being so easily manipulated into doubting Sam. In the video of him at the coffee shop, placing his hand on Brooklyn’s, I hadn’t seen the tears she had manufactured to invite the gesture. But I should have known. I should have seen through all of it.
He assured me it was fine, really, as often as I needed to hear it.
Still a better person than me.
Sam leaned into me, against my uninjured shoulder, as we crossed into the house. In the past, I might have pretended not to notice, but now, I accepted his weight. We both recognized it wasn’t a sign of weakness. Rather, we were stronger together.
No more saying I love you, but . . . These days, we knew enough to stop after the first three words.
“Red coming?” Sam asked. I could tell he was surprised when I said yes. Red had saved me, a toddler he once described as showing signs of a developing anger. Fair enough. The invitation didn’t mean I had forgive
n him, not yet, but it meant I was trying.
Boo bounded at Sam’s feet, nearly tripping him.
“Daryl said he’d stop by too.”
Audrey shrieked. “Does that mean Lester’s coming?”
I smiled and nodded. “And Lester.” If he made it through the morning without an accident. I gave those odds at sixty-forty. “And Zoe.”
“Do we have to wait to have cake?” Audrey asked.
Leo chimed in with, “Mom made it. We’re probably extending our lives by waiting.”
Originally, I had intended a smaller celebration—just the four of us—but Sam had insisted he could handle something larger. I had yielded for the same reason he had insisted: love was supposed to win. We wouldn’t allow someone’s vendetta to change how we lived our lives.
“I think we should eat the cake now,” Sam said.
“Okay, but it’s your stomach,” Leo warned.
We didn’t bother with plates. I moved the cake to the kitchen counter, and Sam handed out forks. Audrey sat on a stool while the rest of us stood, with me close enough to Sam to feel his leg against me. I suspected I would need the reassurance of touch often in the weeks to come, but it was okay, because Sam seemed to need it too. He pressed his leg into mine, then covered my hand with his.
While we waited for our guests, we finished half the cake. Though a little dry and sloped, it was still the best food I had ever eaten. Despite Leo’s grumbling, Audrey said she wanted that exact cake for her seventh birthday, which led to making plans for that.
Making plans. Something just a short time earlier I hadn’t thought possible. Almost as impossible as the laughter that seemed to come so easily to the kids, and, once or twice, unexpectedly, to me too. I leaned into Sam, his warmth, and the cake, but most of all the laughter, serving as sentry against the darkness that was there, always there, but no longer strong enough to intrude. Not unless I chose to let it.
No Bad Deed Page 27