“How?” he asked. “How did you make sure?”
Her jaw was clenched. But the wall she'd put up had a crack in it now and everything she'd stored behind it was pressing against the fracture.
“It was after Tyler,” she said finally. “Maybe a month after the funeral.” She swallowed. “I couldn't sleep. I couldn't be here. So I went to the cemetery at two in the morning. I just needed to be near him.”
Dustin's chest was being crushed from the inside. He didn't want to hear this, but he knew he needed to.
“There was someone there,” Cathy said. “Standing by Tyler's grave. A man. Except he wasn't really a man.” With her thumb, she traced the rim of her coffee mug. “He said he could help. He said he could make it so I'd never lose another child in my lifetime.”
“And you believed him,” Dustin said.
“I'd have believed anyone.” Her eyes were wet now but nothing fell. Held by force of will. “Tyler had been in the ground for only a few weeks and you were already back in the air. And I knew — Iknew— it was going to happen again because I'd let it happen the first time.”
Her voice cracked on the last word. She pressed on.
“I should have stopped you. Both of you. When you were sixteen and planning that jump behind the school. I should have said no. I should have grounded you. I should have locked the doors. Done whatever it took.” Her hands were shaking now. “Instead I put you in training. I taught you how to do the thing that killed your brother. I looked at my two boys and I said,well, I can't stop them, so I'll make sure they do it right.” She laughed, a horrible, brittle sound. “He did it right, Dustin. Tyler did everything right. And he's still dead.”
Dustin couldn't breathe.
“So when that thing at the cemetery offered me a way to make sure it never happened again… yes, I took it.”
“What did he want in return?” Dustin made himself ask.
Cathy looked at him, looked him right in the eyes, and what was in her face was not grief or fear but flat, resigned exhaustion.
“My soul,” she said.
The kitchen went airless.
“Mom,”Dustin whispered.
“It was a fair trade.” Her voice was steady now, the way it got when she'd decided something and didn't want to discuss it. “I'm the reason Tyler is dead. I enabled you two. I signed the permission slips and drove you to the training and watched you jump and told myself I was being a good mother bysupporting your passions.” The last two words came out like poison. “My soul for your life. That's fair.”
“That's not fair. How could youdothat? It's not fair. It's not?—”
“It'sdone, Dustin.”
Dustin couldn't move.
Every phone call was rewriting itself. Every conversation. Every time he'd hung up thinking she didn't care. Every time he'd mistaken her composure for indifference. Every time he'd thoughtshe's not even worried— she hadn't needed to worry. She'd already paid for the answer. She'd made a deal with something inhuman in a cemetery at two in the morning and sold her soul because she thought Tyler's death was her fault and she'd be damned before she let it happen to her other son.
Literally damned.
“Mom,” he said.
Her face crumpled. Not gradually but all at once. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm sorry. I should have stopped you. I should have stopped both of you. And I didn't, and Tyler—” Her voice broke. “So I did the only thing I could think of to make sure I didn't lose you too.”
“Mom.” He was out of his chair. He didn't remember standing. His good arm was around her and she was smaller than he'd realized, so much smaller, and she was shaking against his chest.
“I don't care what happens to me,” she said. “I don't care where I go. I just wanted to keep you.”
Dustin held her. Over her head, he looked at Greg.
His face was pale. His eyes were too bright behind his glasses. He looked like someone who'd found the last piece of a puzzle and wished he hadn't.
CHAPTER 29
Cathy pulled back first.
