It’s the only home I’ve ever known, and these people I can’t seem to look in the eye anymore are the only friends or family I have—unless you count the Byers who are rotting in jail.
So, whether I like it or not, home it is.
I pull away from the stop sign at the corner and make my way down the narrow two-lane road that winds around McBride Mountain toward the turnoff that will take me up it to the homestead.
Each mile that passes, the darkness of the night envelops me even deeper. The trees rise higher on either side of the pavement, the mountain looming to my right.
The faint floodlights of the McBride Lumber yard appear ahead on the left, and for a brief moment, I almost consider turning in, spending the night in the office, and just crashing there at my desk, but it wouldn’t be any better there than at home in my own bed.
Not with the memory of Willow enduring that hypnotism there. Not with all the maps lining the walls, including the one Willow and the rest of us used to figure out where Earl must have taken her and where he had held her captive for a year. Where he forced her to give birth to Niall and run for her life afterward with a newborn in her arms and a prayer to a God who had failed her.
My eyes burn with unshed tears, but I try desperately not to let them fall.
I’ve wasted so many of them over the last nine months, spent too much time dwelling on what happened and my father’s and aunt’s roles in it, but no matter how much I tell myself to move on, to get over it, I can’t.
Even as I watch Killian and Willow with Niall, finding their joy and moving past the pain to build the life they’ve always wanted together, I can’t.
Because Earl’s blood flows through me.
A man who was capable of that kind of devastating violence.
A man who was capable of murdering his wife.
A man who was capable of kidnapping an innocent woman and torturing her for a year.
A man who was prepared to kill anyone who got in his way.
A man who did God only knows what else over the past several decades that was hidden behind the veil of fog the mountain provides.
What does that make me?
The son of a monster…
As soon as I pass the lumberyard, the darkness that matches the feeling in my soul engulfs the truck again and I head toward the turnoff for the falls. I’m tempted to turn in there, too. To park in the small dirt lot and meander through the trees down the path to the waterfall that cascades off the face of the cliff and into the giant pool below.
I could strip off my clothes and slide into the still-icy waters. Let them wash away this constant feeling of being dirty. My soul tainted by what someone who shares my blood did to someone I love so much.
My headlights illuminate the narrow, two-lane road bracketed by towering trees, providing the only break to the pitch-black of the mountain this time of night…
Until a flash of movement and something white cuts across the road.
“Shit!”
I slam on my brakes, the tires squealing as they search for purchase on the pavement, and the truck finally comes to a halt.
My heart thunders against my rib cage.
My breaths rush out hard, my chest aching as I try to see what darted out in front of me.
Out here, it could be just about anything—a rabbit, most likely, given the small size.
I could keep driving, just go, especially since I didn’t feel a bump like I hit anything, but the way I’m shaking, I don’t trust myself to head up the sometimes treacherous mountain trail to the McBride homestead right now.
Nor will my conscience allow me to do that.
I throw the truck into park, push open the door with a trembling hand, then climb from it onto shaky legs. My boots crunch over random bits of gravel in the road as I make my way toward the front of the truck, but I don’t see anything until I fully round the headlight.
What the…?
