“I was shaking,” I add, shaking now like I did then. “In shock, I guess, but Hallie thought I was cold. Rory had his jacket hanging on the back of the chair, and my twin wrapped me up in it. I remember her asking if I was okay, she said the news said to stay home, to stay safe, so Chase dropped her off. She asked me about Mom and Rory… I couldn’t tell her what happened. Fuck, I couldn’t talk at all. I only pointed toward the kitchen. Hallie found the bodies. She covered them up. Together, we waited for Jack to come home to figure out what to do with them.”
We needed our dad. While he was on the fire truck, saving Madison, Hallie and I clung together and cried for our brother and our mom.
I exhale roughly.
There. That’s all of it. I wait for him to say something else, and then he does.
“I was married.”
Okay. Not what I was expecting.
But it’s a bombshell all the same.
My eyes immediately dart to his left hand, to the bare ring finger I know is there. It’s one of the first things I’ve alwaysnoticed about a stranger. I would’ve noticed a wedding band by now.
But there isn’t one. In the nine months since my mom died, Jack has refused to remove his band. Most of the survivors in the Grave responded to the Turning and the loss of their loved ones the same way. Why hasn’t Maverick?
Where is his ring?
Where is his wife?
There’s something else, too. I turn and gaze at his profile, silhouetted by shadows in the firelight. His head is bowed, lost in thought. Though I never asked and didn’t know until he and Chase had the discussion about their ages, it was always clear that he’s older than I am. He was a cop in the before times, and for a while, too.
Why didn’t I think that there were other things he experienced before the Turning?
I don’t know what to say. I make a non-committal noise in the back of my throat, one of interest and surprise. It’s the best I can do.
“Her name was Lindsay. We were married almost fifteen years.” Maverick pauses. His words are short. Clipped. I can tell that he’s unsure how to say any of this—but he feels he owes me. “Would’ve been fifteen in April.”
Though I know better to ask, I can’t help myself. “What happened to her?”
“I did.”
Like usual, Maverick’s gun is resting in his lap. He picks it up, trying to hand it to me, but I don’t take it. In the back of my mind, I remember how he said it’s been his only constant since the Turning.
Suddenly, I know exactly what happened.
“I shot my wife with this gun.” As if the metal is sizzling hot, he takes it gingerly by the tips of his fingers and lays it by hisfeet. “I came home right after she Turned. Can you even imagine walking in on that?”
I don’t respond to his whispered question. After my tale, we both know the answer to that.
“Did she… did she try to bite you?”
Did she try toeatyou?
Maverick’s voice is hollow. Like I did, he’s reliving his past. Remembering.
Hating himself.
“No time. I came home, searching for Lindsay. She hadn’t answered her phone. I tore into the house… I found her in the kitchen. She was already covered in blood, her eyes black, her teeth… she ate our dog. All that was left was the collar… and I knew that my wife was gone. She was one of them. She came at me and I… I emptied my entire revolver into her chest.”
I close my eyes, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing Maverick pulling the trigger, blowing away a faceless woman while wearing the same stoic expression he’s had on since I first left the Grave with him.
“I insisted she get the Injection,” he whispers harshly. I peek open my eyes. He’s glaring at his gun. “She was a scientist, but she was afraid of needles. I told her it was just a little prick and then she’d be set… and she listened to me. It’s my fault. Because of what I asked her to do, I had to empty my revolver into the only woman I’ve ever loved. I watched my wife Turn, then die right before my eyes.”
Suddenly, I understand his fixation with that gun, and why he hesitated when Darryl demanded it. He doesn’t need to wear a wedding band to remember his wife—as I once thought, just like what Rory’s jacket is to me, Maverick’s gun is a reminder.
The burnished piece of metal won’t ever let him forget what he’s lost. He must’ve reloaded it after, but then the world wentto shit and maybe that was the last of the ammo he got his hands on.
