The sprinkler clicked through its rotationoutside. The refrigerator hummed. Greg’s fork froze halfway to his mouth.
“My life,” Cathy repeated.
“Your life.”
Dustin tried to keep his voice level. He wanted to leave the kitchen and drive until the road ran out, the way he always handled things too big to sit with.
But the road had run out.
“Greg found files,” he said. “People like you. People who made deals to protect someone they loved. The system found them and killed them.”
Cathy’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
“When the contract holder dies, the system collects the person they were protecting.” Dustin swallowed hard. “Both of us die, Mom. That’s how this ends.”
Cathy looked at Greg. “Is that true?”
Greg met her eyes. “Yes.”
Something moved across Cathy’s face. Not quite fear, but close.
“Your deal won’t save me,” Dustin said, rougher now. “It won’t save either of us.”
“Stop.”
“I’ll still die.”
“Dustin.”
“Tyler, the deal, the last three years—it’ll all be for nothing.”
“I said stop.”
Her voice cracked on the second word. Just barely.
She picked up her coffee and drank. When she spoke again, her voice was controlled. “He said to come back to where we met.”
Dustin’s chest went tight.
Where they’d met.
Tyler’s grave.
“What’s the phrase?” he asked.
Cathy was quiet for a long time, hands wrapped around her mug. Then she looked up at him, her face raw in a way he’d never seen, as if she’d been stripped down to her essentials.
“I have more to lose.”
Dustin stared at her.
“That’s what you say.” Her mouth thinned. “It was true enough for me.”
Something cold settled in his stomach.
The thing she’d had to lose was him.
“You say it at the grave,” Cathy continued, steady now in the way she got when she was holding herself at arm’s length, “and he comes.”
