His good eye fluttered shut. “Wasn’t a hammer.”
“Please let me take you.” I pressed closer to him, trying to share his space, breathe for him, I didn’t know—something. “To the hospital and then the sheriff.”
“No,” he snarled, his one eye flashing open, full of fire. We’d found a squirrel in the swamp once, badly ravaged by a wolf or bobcat, hanging on by a thread, shivering with fear and pain. Ever had bent to pick it up, to take it to old Mr. Wilkes who ran a small clinic, but the squirrel had hissed with all its strength, glaring up at him with the same look Ever was giving me now, a wounded thing fighting for its life. “Not the cops.Neverthe cops. Do you hear me?”
I looked at him and felt the tears fall down my face.
His glare softened. “I’m sorry, Ruth. I just…can’t.”
“Then let me take care of you.” I wiped under my eyes, determined to be useful, then touched the arm he was cradling. “Is it broken?”
Ever shivered. “No. Just pulled out of the joint. I already popped it back in.”
I didn’t ask how he knew to do that. I just nodded. “I’ll be back.”
I marveled at how clean and orderly his kitchen was, how unlike the living room, as I collected ice from an empty freezer and a hand towel from a drawer with a single matching oven mitt. My mind raced, picturing Ever here as a kid, cooking and cleaning for himself, keeping the kitchen tidy despite his father. In search of Everett’s bedroom, I stumbled into two rooms, the first clearly his father’s, empty bottles of vodka and soda cans littering every surface, his bedsheets twisted off the bed. Thesecond room was pristine, like it hadn’t been touched in years, a desk with a sewing machine in one corner, books stacked tidily on a bookshelf in another, framed pressed flowers on the wall surrounding a yellowed illustration of the Virgin Mary. I wondered about the room, whether it had been his mother’s, then forced myself to turn and keep going.
Everett’s room was the smallest and barest, with only a rickety wooden bed covered by threadbare white sheets, the hospital corners a trick Everett had learned to do from me. There was a small stack of books by his bed, all of them volumes I’d brought him from the library, and a small square window high up in the wall that looked out at the sea of naked trees. The whole room smelled like him, like I was standing in the middle of the forest. Ignoring the pain in my heart, I swooped low and tugged Ever’s blanket off his bed, then returned to the living room.
He groaned with relief when I tucked the blanket around him, shielding him from the cold, but when I bent low with the ice-filled towel, the look in his eyes froze me.
“What?”
“Lay with me,” he whispered. “Please.”
It was the invitation I’d been waiting for. He sat up gingerly as I climbed on the couch, then laid him over my lap, his back and head resting on my legs. When we were settled, he took a deep breath and turned to face me, closing his eyes. With a mother dead in childbirth and a father like Killian, had he ever been held? I set about cleaning the blood from his face, touching him as gently as I could, stopping whenever he winced.
As I was finishing, fresh blood caught my eye—lower, on the arm he’d cradled and shielded. Before he could stop me, I lifted it and looked.
Two puncture wounds on his bicep—a bite mark sharp and deep as the one I’d gotten from the copperhead, slowly oozing blood.
“Ruth,” Ever said, soft but still a warning.
“Who did this to you?”
His eyes slid away. After a minute of silence, he said, “You already know.”
I did, didn’t I? I’d suspected Ever’s bruises and cuts, his weekly badges of dishonor, could be chalked up to more than the drunks at the Blue Moon. No matter how evasive he was, how dismissive, I should’ve pushed the issue, forced him to say it out loud.
“Your father,” I said hollowly. Mr. Duncan wasn’t just a church-shirker or a drunk. For once, the people of Holy Fire had gotten it right. He was a living, breathing monster.
“We got into another argument,” Ever said.
“About what?”
He tried to shrug and winced. “He wants me to do something I won’t.”
I looked at the bruises on his face. “What’s so bad it’s worth this?”
He laughed—a dark sound. “He doesn’t need an excuse anymore.” He must’ve seen the impatience in my face because he added, quickly, “Someone’s been missing down at the garage, and he wants me to fill in. That’s all.”
I frowned. “I thought it was just the two of you at the garage.”
Ever didn’t say anything.
I tried a different tack. “You need to go to the sheriff.”
He closed his eyes. “Never.”
