“Rest, Elijah. Please.” Caleb gets up and touches Elijah’s shoulder. Elijah looks so small and young, slouching in front of him, as if he’s Caleb’s son and not his brother. Caleb could crush him easily between his hands, or with just a word.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Sarah says, and Caleb glances back at her gratefully. “I don’t know how you can see anything out of that eye anyway.”
Elijah studies the linoleum, his mouth a sullen line. “All right.”
Caleb enfolds him in a gentle hug. “I’m glad you’re okay. I always am.”
“I know.” He wriggles out of Caleb’s arms like a cat and slips out of the kitchen. The staircase begins to sing his steps.
Sarah starts to collect the dirty dishes, but Caleb waves her away. “You should rest, too. It’s been a long day.”
“It’s been just as long for you.”
His smile is weary, but genuine. “Taking care of people is what I do.”
Taking care of Elijah, and likely taking care of his father when Jacob Vass’s drunken rages petered out. Taking care of the Suicide Motel’s customers. And now feeding and sheltering her and helping her bury the body. Sarah drinks in his face for a long second and then reluctantly leaves the kitchen.
She climbs the staircase. The house knows her step now. Soft and harmless, like the face she puts on for people. The floorboards yield gently beneath her socked feet. Elijah’s bedroom door is closed. She pauses, feeling the urge to go in and tuck the sheets around him, smooth the hair off his swollen face. But she should let him rest.
In her room, she stretches out on the bed, fidgeting as restlessly as the swaying trees outside. How can Caleb expect her to sleep when Ben is cooling off in the garage? Trying to lie still only encourages her thoughts to run amok. She clambers off the mattress and paces the floor. If her body is busy, her brain can’t stop to think, can’t run through those last moments with Ben in the parlor.
The house sighs as Caleb climbs the stairs, his footsteps stopping down the hall. A door closes. Pipes rattle as a shower turns on. Water blasting against porcelain drowns out everything else.
Sarah glances out the window above the bed. Dusk has fallen, softly, like a blanket. The wind puts its shoulder against the side of the house, again and again, and she sees Elijah’s figure walking into the woods. She recognizes the bulky shoulders of Jacob Vass’s shearling coat. The trees part for him, crowning him with their snowy fronds. He is their king. No, only a prince. Jacob Vass is their king. The king of the disappeared. The first to enter the breach from the Suicide Motel.
A soft knock interrupts her thoughts, and Sarah realizes the shower has stopped.
“Do you have a minute?” Caleb says, which is a strange question to ask when she’s trapped here with all the time in the world.
She opens the door. Caleb looms over her. He doesn’t chide her this time for leaving the door unlocked.
“What is it?” she asks.
Behind him, Elijah’s bedroom is still closed. Did she imagine him walking into the woods? Maybe she actually saw Jacob Vass on the day he disappeared. On a snowy night like this, space seems nebulous, irrelevant, and time has no meaning anymore after months in lockdown. Maybe on the night she came to the Suicide Motel, it was Jacob Vass who watched from the window of the house, and the day Caleb first took her to the backyard, it was Jacob’s figure behind the plastic of the sunroom. A sentinel for the next person who longed to vanish into the woods.
Caleb runs a hand through his damp curls. “I know the last time I stood here, you weren’t happy with me.”
The last time he’d stood there seems like many lifetimes ago. He raises his eyes to meet hers, and she forgets why she’d been unhappy. She can’t imagine why anyone would be unhappy with someone with eyes as blue as his.
“I accused you of knowing nothing about me and Elijah. But I guess you do understand after all.” He wets his lips. “I want to thank you for defending him. He’s all I have.”
“It was my fault,” she blurts, because it’s always her fault. “Ben was my?—”
“He wasn’t your anything. He was his own person, and he chose to attack Elijah. You did what you had to do to save him.”
“I’m sure anyone would’ve done the same.”
His smile is faint. “I doubt it. You’ve spent time with Elijah now. You don’t think he’s a little—off?”
“I think he’s very sweet.”
“He is, but he’s prone to impulses.” Caleb runs his hand through his hair again. “I lied about the knives the other day. We don’t have any because I got rid of them. I’m afraid Elijah will hurt himself.”
Sarah frowns, trying to remember what Elijah had said about the knives. Surely Caleb was the one with the storm inside him, like their father. Not Elijah.
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to protect him, and for someone else to come along and also?—”
His voice breaks. Sarah says, softly, “Like you would have.”
