“You’re just lucky,” he said. I rolled my eyes.
Downstairs, Heather and Zaid had made sandwiches. Heather lit up when she saw me, and I grimaced at the thought of her seeing my face black and blue like this. I wasn’t proud of it. She was going to be hurt that I didn’t tell her about the stalker. About Christine.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, raising her brows. She held my upper arms. “Are you okay?”
“Besides permanently bruised on my face? I’m fine, I guess,” I lied. Damn it. I needed to tell the truth more.
“You don’t look fine,” she said.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. I could tell her. If I had to. If telling the truth was the right thing to do. If the truth would get rid of this guilt. “I didn’t tell you about the stalker because I didn’t want you to worry about me.”
“Zaid told me,” she said. I looked at Zaid. The scars dissected his face. A subtle shrug moved his shoulders and I turned to Grant.
“I had to tell Zaid,” Grant said.
“And besides, I knew you were hiding something,” Heather said. “And when I figured out Zaid knew, I pulled it out of him. We don’t keep secrets in our relationship. But,” she paused, looking up at Zaid, “Zaid convinced me that it was best for you to deal with it on your own. That you didn’t need me to control your decisions. You could figure it out on your own, and you’d be okay.”
I glanced at Zaid quickly but moved my focus back to Heather. I guess I was grateful that he had convinced her of that.
Heather’s eyes wandered over my face, examining the bruise. I expected her to say she regretted it, to reprimand me like an-older-sister-turned-mother was supposed to, but she simply nodded. “And you are okay,” she said.
Guilt flowed through me. Heather was so damn perfect sometimes, it was irritating. I looked down at my toes, the chipped polish, and tucked some hair behind my ear. The strands were brittle. I needed a shower badly.
“Hazel, I’m always going to worry about you. I can’t help it,” Heather said. She squeezed my arm. “But I don’t want you to be afraid to tell me anything. I can back off. But you have to trust me to be able to do that.”
I threw my arms around her and cried like I did when we were kids. We were older now. Even in our twenties, holding her felt different. Like she didn’t see me as a baby anymore. She trusted me to make my own decisions. And I could trust myself too.
I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I picked at a sandwich, then excused myself to shower. The four of us drove back to the house in Mount Charleston, then Grant and I got into his gunmetal car.
Night had descended earlier than I expected, but that’s what happens when you sleep for most of the day. As we drove through the city, just the two of us, I felt calm. I shouldn’t have been that relaxed. We had found the stalkers, but there wasn’t any guarantee that we were safe. There could have been someone else out there, lurking in the darkness, waiting for us. But the look on Grant’s face as he drove—his relaxed jaw, the open brown eyes—I knew we would be okay.
We drove out into the desert, and this time, I helped move the bodies. They were heavier than I expected, and Grant did most of the lifting, but once they were inside of the holes, we both shoveled dirt and sand to help keep them there. It felt like I was doing more than burying a dead body. I was burying the guilt that came with Dean’s death. For lying to everyone. For being the woman who lived.
Sometimes I couldn’t fathom my own actions. That I had killed Christine. I may not have killed Dean, but there was no mistaking the fact that I had killed his sister. I didn’t blame her for wanting to kill me. I would’ve felt the same way about Heather.
It was an out of body experience. Holding the gun. Aiming it.
Putting dirt on their bodies.
A part of me would always feel like it should have been me. I may not have known what it was like to lose the only family I had, but I knew it would have killed me to lose Heather. Or to lose Grant.
But there was only one way I could make it right.
I could help runaways like me. Make sure that they never ended up in situations like I had. History didn’t have to repeat itself.
By the time we were done, we were covered in dirt. We cleaned ourselves off with baby wipes, and then we drove.
“Do you want to pick up boxes?” Grant asked, his eyes still on the road.
“No,” I said. I watched him for any signs of relief, but Grant was as stoic as ever. “There’s something else.” This time, his gaze flicked to me before he turned back to the empty road. “Can we go to the shelter soon?”
“You want to see Micki.”
“Duh.”
“Tell me when.”
Happiness filled me, warming me from the inside. Grant didn’t have any expectations, but he was there for me, always pushing me to do what I wanted. I had always needed someone like him. The man who could show me gentleness when I believed I didn’t deserve any. The same man who could give me pain when I needed it, when it was the only thing that could make the thoughts stop. Like tonight.
