I nodded. Right. Yes. That was a safer topic. “I blew a tire.”
The weight of my camera bag no longer felt like an anchor. Instead of grounding me, it made the muscles in my shoulder pinch. I switched it to the other side, blinking through a sudden wave of dizziness. When was the last time I had eaten something besides those honey sticks?
“If you have to think, it’s been too long.”
“Where?” Jack asked.
“Not far. Quarter mile down the road?” I hesitated, discomfort collecting inside me. I didn’t want to ask them for help, but Jack guessed anyway.
“You need a ride.”
I hated that he was right.
“I can take you in the morning to get it patched. The garage is closed now anyway,” Jack said. “Why don’t you take your old room tonight?”
The monster perked up.“We’re sleeping over?”
I blinked, setting down my teacup to hide its shaking. “Jack,” I started, his name a bitter dreg on my tongue. “I can’t.”
“You can’t go anywhere else,” Jack said calmly, the leaves of the aspen fluttering in tune with his breath. It made the sapling feel that much more alive. Not only forest but flesh too, human and wilderness twining as one.
I shuddered.
Jack Moreau had always been a little wild. I’d seen him pluck strands of grass from his beard. I’d seen roots pushing from his soles. I’d seen him bleed red-green.
But this was different. This time, I couldn’t help the budding fear that this was all my fault. A thundering pressure heavied in my chest. I couldn’t stay here when I was the reason their lives were so utterly changed.
“I can drive you to the valley,” Izzy offered.
Guilt breathed its spores into me. “No. It’s fine.” The drive down to Cumberland Valley was nearly an hour long. I could wait until morning. Just a few hours, a quick tire patch, and then I could leave. If I was lucky, I wouldn’t see Eva at all. I wouldn’t have tofigure out if she really did have more freckles or if I’d simply forgotten some of her constellations.
Jack crossed to the window over the sink and hauled it open, reaching through to pluck a scarlet bloom from the rosebush just outside. I cocked my head. Odd that it didn’t bloom where he touched it.
Jack snapped off the thorns and held it out to me. “Take it before you pass out.”
The monster eagerly stretched up my spine.“Yes, please. I’m so hungry.”
“I don’t want it,” I said, tapping the side of my leg.
Maybe, if I’d had more time, more courage, I would have told them about the monster that summer. The Moreaus knew I killed things with a single touch. They knew I hated it. Worst of all, they knew that sometimes killing was the only thing that made me well again. Be it flower, mouse, or snake, they didn’t question it, saying I was good inside when the truth was, I was rotting.
Jack held the bloom out, stem toward me. I tried not to look at the tree, or to register the new emerald saturation in his irises, which used to be as blue as Eva’s.
The instant the delicate flower touched my skin, its petals shriveled. My vision steadied as the taste of rose spread over my tongue.
Jack stepped back with a crisp nod. “Right. Help yourself to a shower if you like. We’ll get a new pair of sheets on the bed. You let us know if you need anything.”
“Wait.” Beneath the taste of rose, the bite of ashes was still acrid in my mouth. My stomach clenched as I forced out the words. “Can I borrow a broom?”
Pain flashed across Jack’s face, there and gone so quick I almostmissed it. “I got it,” he said gently, bucketing my shoulder with a large hand. The weight of it, the human warmth, shocked my protest away. He was careful not to touch my skin—Jack was always careful—but the pressure alone, the comfort of it, woke in me an old ache.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Arthur,” Jack said.
Something flickered, deep inside me. Guilt, of course, my eyes flicking to the place where his tree disappeared beneath a mound of torn, scarred flesh.
Grief, too, for the pain I remembered seeing on his face that night. Grief for the years I might have had here, the home I might have built, if everything hadn’t gone so wrong.
Still, I wasn’t his prodigal, or a stray that had simply wandered off. I’d put myself in exile, and for eight long years I had buried every desire to come back or call or write a damn letter.
