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“This time,” Mark says. He’s not getting enough air, his words weak and reedy. “Just this time.”
There’s a beat of silence that lengthens into hours, fat and ripe with possibility. And then Bishop says, even and quiet, “This is the last time.”
My whole body goes still at his words at the same time that Mark begins to fight, flailing and kicking, desperate, the meaning behind what Bishop’s said sinking in. But Bishop holds on, gives a slight grunt when Mark catches him in the ribs with an elbow, but doesn’t loosen his grip. It takes less than a minute for Mark to wear himself out, head hanging low, air gusting out of him in uneven bellows. Blood drips off his face into the dirty snow at his feet.
Bishop looks at Ash, looks at Caleb, looks at me. Waits. He’s reading our faces, searching for a sign that we want him to stop. Waiting for a sign I won’t give him. Because I know what has to happen. Mark’s already had more than one second chance. He’s earned this ultimate punishment, earned it through pain he’s doled out, lives he’s taken, innocence he’s stolen. And if I’d finished what I started that night on the riverbank, then Bishop wouldn’t have to be the one doing it now. So I keep my gaze on Bishop when he jerks the arm he has around Mark’s neck upward, tightens it against Mark’s throat. I center myself with Bishop’s unflinching eyes as Mark’s life is choked out of him—his gasping breaths eventually fading into silence, his drumming feet slowing to a stop. I don’t look away when Bishop finally lets go, Mark’s body crumpling to the ground.
We leave Mark’s body where it fell and keep moving. We don’t have the tools to dig him a grave in the frozen earth, even if he were worth the effort. None of us talks much the rest of the day. Bishop takes up the rear of the procession, and I can tell he wants to walk alone. It reminds me of the night he pushed Dylan from the roof, the solitary walk he needed to come to terms with what he’d done. So I give him space and walk silently in front of him, hoping in some small way that the simple fact of my presence will bring him comfort.
When we stop for the night, Caleb manages to catch two small rabbits, and while Bishop and Ash set up the tent, I gut them and cook them over the fire. Almost as soon as we’re done eating, Ash and Caleb retreat to the tent, Ash mumbling something about being extra tired. It’s not a particularly convincing excuse, but I’m grateful for it anyway. Neither Ash nor Caleb seems affected by Mark’s death. They are practical about this world we live in. Out here we don’t always have the luxury of making moral judgments like right or wrong. Sometimes it is simply kill or be killed. But I think they want to give Bishop and me a chance to talk privately. Caleb lays his hand briefly on my shoulder as he passes, squeezes once, before disappearing behind Ash into the tent.
The fire we used to cook the rabbits is dying down, but still gives off some warmth. I scoot closer to Bishop, watch the way the firelight plays over the line of his jaw. He turns to look at me, his face grim.
“I killed him,” he says. They’re the first words he’s spoken since Mark. He holds his arms out in front of him, fingers splayed. “With my bare hands.” He laughs, a hollow rasp. “Well, with my bare arm, if we’re being technical.”
I suck in a breath. I don’t want to say the wrong thing, don’t want to blurt out something that’s going to hurt instead of heal. I take his hands and fold them between mine. “They’re good hands,” I say, remembering all the ways he’s touched me with those long fingers, all the ways he’s used those hands to comfort and love me. “You’re a good person, Bishop.”
He flinches just a little. “I don’t know if you can still say that after today.” When he tries to draw his hands back, I hold on, tighten my fingers.
“Yes, I can.”
He stops fighting my grip. “You want to know the worst part?” he asks, eyes back on the fire. “I don’t even regret it. I’m just glad he’s one less thing I have to worry about. I never have to think about him hurting someone else. Never have to worry that he’s going to hurt you again.”
“That doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s like you told me back in Westfall—the world is brutal now. It’s hard, and sometimes we have to be hard, too, just to live in it.” He turns to look at me, and I let go of his hands so I can run my fingers lightly over the swollen corner of his mouth. “And it’s going to change us. There’s no way it won’t. But what you did today, it doesn’t alter what’s at the heart of you, Bishop. You’re still the best person I’ve ever known.”
He doesn’t speak, just leans toward me and kisses me. I shift and pull him closer, thread my fingers through his hair. When we move apart, I put my head on his shoulder, watch the dying flames dance in the wind.
“What happened with Mark,” Bishop says, “it made me think about where we’re headed, what we’re going to do when we get there.” He kisses the top of my head, leaves his lips against my hair as he speaks. “And I can’t see it ending any differently than today.”
I shift my head so I can see him. “You’re going to strangle my sister?”
Bishop laughs, and I’m not sure what it says about the people we are becoming that we can make light of what happened so soon. All I know is I’m thankful for the sound of Bishop’s laughter, the smile that lifts all the way to his eyes. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” he says. “But no.” He wraps a strand of my hair around his finger, gives it a gentle pull. “I just mean, even if we’re able to help her, even if we do this for her, I don’t think she’s going to be any different, Ivy. Some people…some people never change, even when they should.”
“I know,” I say, because he’s probably right.
“It’s like when I gave that food to Mark when he was first put out. Looking back now it was so stupid and pointless—”
“It wasn’t,” I protest.
“It was,” Bishop says. “A guy like that, a person like that, he’s never going to change. No matter how much other people did for him or how many chances he got, he was always going to be the same terrible person. And I don’t think Callie’s any different.”
It seems unfair somehow, the sharp stab of pain his words brings. As if I should be beyond feeling such grief over Callie. He’s not telling me anything I don’t already know. Not telling me anything I didn’t already figure out my
self that day in the courtroom when I saw Callie talking to Bishop, already trying to work her way into his good graces.
“I think my needing to go back has more to do with me than it does with Callie,” I tell him. “Or my father.”
“What do you mean?”
“I could go on with my life, our life, out here. Leave Callie and my father to their fates, the same way they did with me. And I’d probably be okay with that, actually. For a while at least.” I sigh, push the toe of my boot against a blackened stick that’s fallen from the fire, watch it crumble to ash. “But it would eat at me. I wouldn’t be able to forget it. Just letting Callie be killed, not at least trying to stop it? Not making the attempt to help my father? It would leave a little rotten spot, right here.” I push my fist into the soft space beneath my rib cage. “Something that would only get bigger and darker with time.” I shake my head, hating the wobble in my voice. “And I don’t want to live with something like that inside me.”
I slide my eyes toward Bishop, sure I sound crazy to his ears. I sound halfway crazy to my own. But his gaze is tender, heating my skin far more than the fire.
“I love you,” he says quietly.
I want to take his words, the truth of them I can see on his face, and cup them in my hands like a glowing coal from the fire. Keep them with me warm and bright, a talisman.
“I love you, too,” I tell him, thinking about each word as I say it, putting everything I feel into each syllable. I hope I’m giving him back what he’s just given me. Something to hold on to. A touchstone against the darkness we are walking toward.
