Where are you, Lewis?
Caden climbs out and sits on the mud next to me, feet dangling into the grave. Theemptygrave. “I’m taking you home.”
“I have no home.” I sound far away. My voice isn’t mine.
“Yes, you do. Look, Elodie…”
I spring up and cut him off. “Where’s your brother’s grave?”
He frowns. “Here. Why?”
I lunge forward, grabbing his arms. “We have to check.”
He looks horrified. “Absolutely fucking not. We need one sane mind between us.”
I yank his shirt, bringing him close to my face, desperation overruling everything else. “We have to! What if they’re not dead, Caden?! What if neither of them are in the coffins, what else could that mean?!”
Caden grabs onto my arms, prying me off him but I cling tight. “Elodie, listen to me. You’re running on no fucking sense at all. You’ve been through a lot, grief is a funny thing–”
“No.” I shove a finger in front of his face. “Don’t you dare patronise me. You know what this could mean. I may seem crazy, I may look fucking manic, but we have to know, don’t we? If they’re alive, wouldn’t you want to find Max? Don’t you want to know?”
“Not being buried is a far-cry from being alive. They’re dead, Elodie. Dead.”
“Stop saying that word!”
“But they are! If they’re not, why haven’t they come back?” His face cracks into something sorrowful. “Why wouldn’t Max come back to me?”
My thoughts spiral. “What if they couldn’t?”
“What?”
I can see it in his eyes as raindrops fall in front of them. I can see just a modicum of curiosity, so I push. “What if something happened to them, or they did something… that caused them to go into hiding, or they were taken? What if the whole thing never happened? What if they’re out there, either together or apart, and they need help?” The possibilities race through my mind. Them being alive and in trouble is the only answer I’ll accept. The only reason Lewis wouldn’t have come back to me.
Caden studies me, battling some internal war. Finally, he hangs his head. “I can’t dig his grave up, Elodie.”
He’s scared. I get it, sure. I’m fucking terrified. But just the almost-impossible idea that they might not really be dead is driving my whole being right now. I grab his neck and pull him closer, forcing him to lock his eyes with mine. “We have to know.”
We stare at each other in the darkness, paralysed by possibility.
“This is ludicrous. Completely insane,” he says.
I ease the grip on his neck, bringing my fingertips up to cup his jaw. “Then it suits us perfectly, doesn’t it?”
After a few more silent seconds, with only the violent patter of torrential rain and aggressive wind filling the air, he sighs. “You got another shovel?”
***
It’s harder this time round. Whether that’s because I’ve spent all my strength or the adrenaline’s just not as prominent when it’s not my own brother. Either way, it takes fucking forever toget down to Max’s coffin. Caden does most of the work, anyway, clearly fuelled by the same need I was a little while ago.
This could change everything. Lewis alive? I could get my life back.
Finally, Caden’s shovel thumps against wood.
I step back, leaning against the mud wall and shine my torch for him, even though the sun is finally breaking the horizon, letting him do this as alone as possible.
He hesitates. For a while.
“We have to know, Caden,” I say softly.
