Luke follows me down the hall.“Marin.”
I stop at the basement door.Hand on the knob.
“What?”
He’s standing in the kitchen.His face is doing something it doesn’t usually do.Something careful.Something braced.
“He’s gone,” Luke says.
I look at him.
“Gone how?”
Two words.But they carry everything.Because “gone” from a man who joked about burying someone in the backyard might not mean “gone” the way normal people mean it.
“The column gave out.He worked his hands loose.I went downstairs and he was gone.”
The relief should be instant.It isn’t.Because something in Luke’s face doesn’t match the story.
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
“This afternoon?Luke, that was—” I’m counting.Hours.Too many hours.“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t—you were supposed to be watching him.That was the entire point.That was the one thing I asked you to do.”
“I know.”
“So where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
But he does.I can see it.The way his jaw is set.The way he’s not meeting my eyes.The way he’s standing in my kitchen like a man who has already made his peace with something I haven’t been told yet.
“Luke.What did you do?”
He doesn’t answer.
“What did you do?”
“I let him go, Marin.”
The kitchen is quiet.The house is quiet.The basement is quiet.Everything is quiet in the way things get quiet when the ground shifts under your feet and you’re standing on the place where it cracked.
“You let him go.”
“You were going to do it tomorrow.I did it today.”
“That wasn’t your decision.”
“I know.”
“It wasn’t your call, Luke.It was mine.He was mine.Thiswas mine.”
“I know.”
