Barry nods. “We got the results back this afternoon. A match on dental records.” He glances around. “I’m really not supposed to say before the sheriff.”
“Tell us,” pleads the woman who opted for a chair over sitting next to Everett. “We’re going to find out eventually. This just gives us more time to think.”
Barry eyes Gerald and the Fortenot Fishing crew. “All right, then. But I need y’all to brace yourselves. You’re not going to like it.”
For six years Everett and I have avoided speaking Renard’s name. Willing him away, keeping his spirit locked in whatever dark hell he was sent to after we killed him. Now I’m going to hear his name again, and like an invocation, it’ll call his spirit back. There will be hell on earth.
Barry takes a breath to speak.Renard, the darkness whispers, like a spell curling out of Barry’s mouth.
“The skull’s Fred Fortenot’s.” Barry shakes his head. “Can you believe it?”
Gasps erupt around the bar, loudest from Gerald and the Fortenot Fishing crew, Fred’s former employees. Even the people who’d remained at the counter now get up to join us, sensing something big has happened. Fred’s name leaps from table to table.
For a moment, all I feel is strangely hollow. Where Renard’s name should be, there’s an impostor. “Fred Fortenot,” I echo. My voice is hoarse. “I thought he died in a boat accident. Lost in the gulf.”
I grew up my whole life next door to the Fortenots: Fred; his wife, Mary; and their daughter, Beth. Fred founded Fortenot Fishing, which by God’s grace has grown into one of the biggest commercial fishing companies in southern Louisiana, employing more than half this town, sending hundreds of men out into boats to trawl the gulf for shrimp and red snapper. Gerald Theriot and a big chunk of the people in this bar worked for Fred or were married to people who did. Fred had beenone of the most respected men in Bottom Springs, a church elder and one of my father’s closest friends. When he disappeared three years ago, Fortenot Fishing suspended work for a month to join the sheriff in searching the gulf. All they recovered was Fred’s personal skiff. The whole town had gathered for a vigil on Main Street to mourn the man lost to the same sea that had given him his livelihood. Everyone except Fred’s wife and daughter.
How is it Fred in the swamp, and not Renard? It doesn’t make sense.
“We assumed that’s how Fred died when we found his boat,” Barry says, “but forensics says his body’s in the swamp. And he didn’t die by accident. Someone beat the living shi—” He glances at me. “Sorry. I forgot, delicate ears.”
Gerald and the other Fortenot Fishing captains still haven’t uttered a word. For once, their shock is too great.
“That’s hard to hear,” Everett says, still calm. He has to be in shock like I am, but doing a better job of hiding it. I should be relieved—Holy Father, I should beecstatic—but I can’t accept the idea that we’ve dodged a bullet. Something still feels terribly wrong.
“The sheriff’s planning on announcing it tomorrow,” Barry says and, to my surprise, reaches across the table to take my hands. I’m so rigid he has to yank them, but he does, persistent. The way his fingers circle my wrists feels like handcuffs sliding on.
I can’t shake the feeling I should be going to prison.
“Don’t worry, Ruth.” Barry rubs the thin skin where my pulse beats in my wrists, and Everett looks down. “You don’t have to be scared. Whoever did this, we’re gonna find him, and he’s gonna fry.”
“You can find him,” Gerald says darkly. “But you won’t have a body left to fry. I’m going to take that man apart just like he did to Fred.”
The conversation erupts around us, vows of vengeance and whispers of horror from voices thick with alcohol. Under the table, Everettbumps my knee again. When I glance at him, he raises a dark eyebrow in question. Inviting me back into our secret universe, just him and me.
At his look, I realize why I’m not relieved, despite our narrow escape. Because Fred Fortenot was murdered and disposed of in the exact same manner, in the exact same place, as the man we killed years before him. Which means there’s another killer in Bottom Springs.
A copycat.
Does someone know what we did?I wish we were alone so I could ask Ever. I want to read the reassurance on his face, hear him say,We’ll figure it out.
For the first time, I can’t tune out the world. It presses its fingers around my throat, suffocating: Gerald’s face, purple with rage; the voices clamoring over each other to be heard; the animal smell of too many close-pressed bodies mingling with the sour tang of beer.
Could the person who killed Fred be in this very room? Are they watching Everett and me, swirling ice cubes in their glass, smiling to see us sweat?
Have we escaped one noose only to find our necks in another?
Ever leans so close his lips brush my hair. “It’s okay, Ruth,” he whispers. “Don’t you see? You’re safe.”
Goose bumps ripple over my arms. He’s wrong. This discovery isn’t a reprieve. We’ve entered some dark game I don’t understand. Our secret is a wound, a vulnerability. We’re bleeding in the water, and there’s a predator circling, so cunning I never saw it coming.
Safe is the last thing we are.
7
JUNE, SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD
Every day after we fed Renard to the swamp, I watched for Everett to appear at the edge of my property—and when he did, I followed him into the wild. Over time, through forest, mud, and meadow, I learned to move as smoothly as he did, to sight birds swooping through trees, discern different types of bog flowers. In a million years, I never would’ve guessed that the first time I’d fall in love, it would be with the earth itself. The pure, sweet smell of trees after rain. The sucking squelch of mud under my boots. The sound of leaves shaken so furiously by the wind that they rang like bells. Most intoxicating of all, the way my body felt moving through it, confident and alive.
