Page 54 of Dearly Departed

The last breath he’ll ever take rattles out of him, wet with blood.

I don’t move.

I’m not sure what happens if I move.

Then Catherine knocks into me, going to her knees on the sand. She throws her arms around my neck.

“Oh my God,” she says. “Oh my God. Are you okay? Are you—Jacob, please tell me you’re okay.”

“I killed him.”

“I know. Are you hurt?”

“I killed him.” I meet Catherine’s eyes, and the relief there is just too much. “I’m just like my father. I’m just like your father. I killed him, Catherine. I’m just like them.”

15

CATHERINE

Jacob loses it.

Chasing me across the island—how did he even do that?—was too much for him. Trying to escape a murderer was too much for him. Everything that happened with the consortium, starting with Gabriel’s parents dying, was just way too much.

I have to promise him that Raymond Harris will be okay before he’ll rest Raymond’s head on the sand and come away from the body. We get as far as the entrance to the cave before Jacob can’t go another step.

He sinks back down to the sand, puts his head on my shoulder, and sobs.

After twenty minutes or so, it’s pretty obvious that he can’t stop.

“I’m sorry, Catherine. I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I killed him.”

“He was going to kill us.”

“But I’m the one who did it, and that means⁠—”

“You’re nothing like your father, or my father, or anybody else’s father unless they were just a good man. Like you. You’re good, Jacob. I still love you. I’m always going to love you.”

Jacob howls when I tell him I still love him. He howls until he loses his voice, then switches back to sobbing.

He’s still sobbing when he clears his throat and gestures at the cave. “Was that—the X?”

“On the map? I think so, yeah.”

“What was in it?”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Jacob seems to find it genuinely distressing that there was nothing in the cave, even though it was marked on the map. It seems like it’s eating him up from the inside that there wasn’t a silver lining. No treasure to find.

“Then why did he bring you here?” he demands, sobbing harder.

“I don’t know.” I want to have an answer for him, but I don’t. I don’t know what Raymond Harris’s plan was. He seemed perfectly calm, almost eerily calm until we got to the beach, and then he…broke down and started collecting driftwood. “Maybe he was going to burn me as a witch.”