Once it becomes real, even fear has to make room for it.
Silas exhales slowly.
“Who would she still owe?”
The question is quiet, but it lands hard.
I don’t answer right away because the answer is not a list. It is not a theory. It is not even fully a thought. It is a face.
One face rises up so quickly…so vividly…that I feel the old terror before I remember his name. Tall. Heavy hands. Breath that always smelled like stale beer and mint. The man who left the most marks. The one whose tally lines had taken the longest to fade. The one who used to smile at my mother like he was doing her a kindness while he carved himself into my body deeper than the others ever did.
My stomach turns.
Silas feels the shift in me immediately, his arm tightening almost immediately.
“There is someone,” he says.
It isn’t really a question. He reads enough in my face to know.
I nod once, then wish I hadn’t because even that tiny confirmation makes it more real. “One of them,” I whisper. “More than the others. He…” My mouth goes dry. “He left the most.”
The words sound ugly, but Silas understands them anyway. His jaw sets so hard I can see the muscle jump beneath his skin. He is trying, visibly, not to let his anger outrun the moment. I know the effort it takes because I can feel it in the way his body goes still against mine.
Before either of us can say more, his phone starts ringing.
The sound cuts through the room sharply enough to make me flinch. Pulling his own phone from his pocket with visible irritation, he glances at the screen, answering without bothering to hide the annoyance in his face.
“Yeah?”
The voice on the other end is loud enough that I hear it immediately.
The Warden.
Even through the tinny speaker, his voice carries the same oily authority it always has, the same tone men like him use when they think possession and discipline are the same thing.
“Care to explain to me,” he says, “a certain party you were at where a kid overdosed?”
Silas scowls at the phone, the look on his face turning his whole body harder.
“I wasn’t involved.”
“That’s not what the owners of the house are saying.” There is a pause, loaded enough to feel like a smirk. “The Andersons are saying you provided the drugs.”
For one beat, the room goes completely still.
Then my hand shoots out.
Taking the phone from Silas before he can stop me, his surprise flashes across his face, but by then I already have the device pressed to my ear, anger hitting so fast it burns clean through the fear for the first time all night.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?”
The silence on the other end is brief.
Then the Warden says my name carefully, like he is already trying to place how much trouble this call just became.
I do not let him.
“You don’t get to call this house and throw around accusations when you have no idea what happened,” I snap. “Silas was trying to help that boy while everyone else stood there panicking.”
