Once we were on it, bouncing up and down the mountainous terrain, struggling over mounds of snow, my mind started turning again.
Tell her the truth and lose her, or lie and lose her. Those are your options.
Would lying keep me safe? Would it keep the truth from coming out?
No. Not really.
She knew we had all too much in common now.
She had killed. I had killed.
But Gwen had killed in self-defense. I didn’t know the whole story, but I could tell from the body. The slices in his knuckles. The scratch marks descending his neck and torso.
She’d done what she had to.
I had done what I wanted to.
She couldn’t forgive that, could she?
Maybe she would tell me her story if I asked. I wouldn’t be able to hear it over the roar of the tractor, but when we stopped, when we got to the grave, maybe that could start the conversation. Maybe she was as desperate to get it off her chest as I was to get it off mine.
It was almost an hour later when the pine tree became visible. It stood higher than all the others. On a normal day, that’s how I remembered this spot. But one time, I came out in the middle of the night, and I couldn’t remember which one it was. So I searched and searched, finally found it, and carved an S into the tree.
That S stared back at me now.
Lit only by Gwen’s flashlight and the moon above, I stepped from the tractor and started shoveling by hand. The bucket may have moved the snow faster, but I needed to stretch after that ride. I needed the cool air against my skin. The flush of adrenaline as I hit the ice layer was the boost I needed.
Grabbing a bundle of wood from the bucket, I searched for Gwen’s eyes behind the blinding flashlight. “I should’ve told you sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t. I just?—”
“Shut up and dig the damn hole.”
Sucking my teeth, silence resumed. Deep, aching silence. The kind only winter brought.
No bugs hummed in the brush, no birds sang in the trees. A few twinkling snowflakes fell from the sky, but no wind rustled the branches. The only sound for miles was the crackling of my fire and Honey’s panting.
When the ground was wet enough, I stomped out the fire, climbed back into the tractor, and dug. An hour must have passed by the time I hit ice again. Rinse, repeat. I hopped out, lit another fire, and let it burn for a while. We stayed silent while it did.
I almost apologized again. But I swallowed it back down, because she didn’t want to hear that. She knew why I’d lied. Didn’t change that I was so damn good at it. Didn’t change that I wasn’t who she thought I was.
When the fire had burned a while, I stomped it out again, climbed back into the tractor, and resumed digging. We were close now. One more fire, and I would reach David.
Right now, Gwen was inches behind me, her body heat warming my back. Each breath she took, I felt against the nape of my neck. Her knee was right against my shoulder, and what if this was the last time we sat so close to each other? What if she never wanted to see me again after this?
What if she hated me?
I needed to say something else before she saw the body.
Over the hum of the tractor, I choked out, “What happened?”
“What happened to what?” Each word was as pointed as a sword.
“With David. I know the story you told Edwards was bullshit, but I’ve been trying to map it out for months.” I dipped the bucket down into the hole. Now full of damp dirt, I lifted the arm in the air and dumped it beside the tree. “I have the feeling you were there. Or maybe Simone called you and told you he hurt her, so you hunted him? He had a lot of defensive wounds though, so I’m leaning toward the former. I don’t know. I’m just curious how it went down.”
A long moment of silence. She broke it with, “I was outside smoking. Saw lights at the gates. I heard Simone. She was screaming.” Gwen’s voice broke. Another moment of silence passed before she continued. “He was beating the living shit out of her. I told him to leave. He wouldn’t. He got in my face, and he was screaming, and then I was screaming, and he pushed me, and I pushed him, and then his hands were around my throat.” Her voice cracked, and I swore I felt her tense, even though the only part of our bodies that touched were my shoulder and her knee. “I had a knife in my pocket, so I used it.”
Damn it. This would’ve been so much easier if she had hunted him down. “I figured it was something like that.”
“Whoever you killed,” she said, almost inaudible over the rumble of the tractor, “was it like that? Self-defense?”
