“I’m tired of hearing about the weather,” I say blandly.
“Chloe, we’re just worried about you,” Abi says. “We’vebeenworried about you.”
“I’m fine.” I push out of the chair and lean up against the banister, staring across the water at the peninsula. Theo’s territory. My skin gets a hot, itchy feeling, an agitation that’s terrorized me since that night.
“At least promise you’ll keep an eye on the weather reports,” Abi says. “And keep me posted if you change your mind.”
“Or I can come stay with you again,” Penelope offers.
I look over at them again. Penelope studies me in the camera. Abi sighs.
“I don’t need anyone to come to stay with me,” I tell them. “But I’ll watch the weather forecasts, okay?”
And then I snap the laptop shut.
I don’t go back inside, though, just keep staring across the water at Theo’s territory. Whenever I get like this, there’s only one thing that makes the agitation go away, and that’s dragging out Oliver’s old boat from where I keep it stored in my garage and rowing across the water.
It’s sick. I know it is. But I can’t stop myself. I don’t even know what I’m looking for whenever I do it.
I snatch up my laptop and stalk back inside, tossing it onto the couch as I make my way into the garage. My thoughts grind around, the way they always do after my weekly Zoom check-in. Jumping back to that hot, August night. To the days that followed. The hours I spent at the police station, telling my story over and over, like they were trying to catch me in a lie. The time I spent on the phone with Oliver’s social worker, an overworked woman named Sofia who would assure me, with the patience of a schoolteacher, that he was fine.
We just want things to be normal for him, she kept saying.For him to settle in with his foster family.
I drag the rowboat down to the lakeshore, my heart thumping furiously in my chest. The sun beats down on me, winter-pale but uncomfortably warm. The overgrown azaleas over at one of the empty houses nearby are starting to bloom early, blotches of bright pink that stand out against the yellow grass of the yard.
I drop the boat into the water and push out onto the lake. Despite the warmth, it’s quiet out here. Of course it is. I’m the only person living on the lakefront anymore. The other families that managed to escape Theo’s axe?—
He goes door to door. He doesn’t want us here.
—All packed their shit and fled the second they could. I assume they’re rich enough to keep paying for a lake house and afford rent or another mortgage.
I’m not.
At least, that’s my excuse. It’s a shitty one; Abi and my mom have both begged me to come stay with them, rent-free, until I can offload the property. Penelope, when she was staying here, even tentatively suggested we go live with her sister.
I told them no.
That’s all I tell anyone these days. No, I don’t want company. No, I don’t want to leave for a weekend visit. No, I’m not having a nervous breakdown because I discovered five dead bodies and shot their killer, the man I had been fucking, with a shotgun.
Oliver’s rowboat slices cleanly through the water and then runs aground on the peninsula’s dirt-packed beach. For a second, I sit there, the warm breeze tousling my hair. I can’t imagine snow falling in this place, even though the weather forecasts are all in a panic about it.
I’ve never been afraid of snow, though. I’m certainly not afraid of snow in North Carolina.
I walk along the narrow, overgrown path leading to the cemetery, breathing in the scent of the poplar trees. Already, my agitation is starting to slip away, although I still get a prickle on the back of my neck, like Theo really is the ghost that Oliver thought he was, and that he’s watching me through the shadows.
That prickle intensifies when I step into the graveyard. Theo’s old gravestone juts up, the winter having killed off the overgrown grass.
You’re waiting for him, aren’t you?
Penelope said that to me when the two of us came to the peninsula while she was staying with me. She said it in this graveyard, in fact, while I was staring down at his gravestone, my thoughts numb.
I denied it, vehemently.No, of course not. Are you fucking crazy?
A lie. And Penelope knew it, too, because she put her hand on my shoulder, and explained how it works in a soft, even voice.How when a Hunter dies, they’re supposed to bury themselves in the ground because that helps them come back faster, and that’s why Theo’s body disappeared the way it did.
Because they did lose the body, the cops. Somehow in the chaos after the murders, as Oliver and I were wrapped in silver blankets and swept off to the Pinella hospital, Theo vanished. The cops told me about it when I had to speak to them the day after, their voices stern and hard. I was in a witness room, surrounded by stuffed animals, but there was still a sharpness in their tone that suggested I might have done something wrong.
Are you sure you killed him? This Theo Shorn?
