Page 126 of We Already Dug the Grave

Frances marched toward where they’d left the body. It didn’t take long to find the camera. It was in the same place where it had landed when Milly had tossed it to deliver the first blow.

Shane, however, was not in the same place.

He’d rolled to his belly. Frances thought she heard a whistling intake of breath over the crickets chirping and the katydids singing their night song. She picked up the camera and stuffed it into the pocket of her athletic shorts, then walked to where Shane lay.

She watched as his back seemed to rise and fall, but it was probably a trick of the shadows.

Then he gasped.

“Help me.” It was raspy and sounded wet.

Frances squatted next to him and placed her palm on what was once a handsome cheek, but now was pulpy like the potted meat Aunt Hattie scraped onto saltines for a midnight snack.

Beneath the slick of his blood, his skin was still warm. What was the right thing to do?

Once, when Frances was a girl, the day her mama had taken their daddy’s gun and changed the trajectory of their lives forever, her sister had sat next to her on the bench outside the principal’s office at St. Mary’s Academy in Lundinville, Alabama. Milly had put her bony arm around her and whispered in her ear. “Frances, I promise everything will be okay.”

Milly hadn’t known it, but it had been a lie. Nothing from that moment forward had ever been okay.

Frances petted Shane’s slick hair.

Frances stood and cocked back her foot but changed her mind. It had taken her months to save up enough buy her Converse. Right now, they could still be salvaged. But if she kicked Shane’s potted-meat head? There’d be no hope.

Instead, with one hand, she squeezed his nostrils closed, and with the other, tightly covered his swollen lips. She stayed there until her legs burned and her arms felt heavy. He twitched only a little. When Frances stood back up, he was dead.

Good.

Carefully, she rolled him onto his back.

Then.

Frances smiled as she walked away.

Chapter 50 Hattie-May

Then

Hattie-May couldn’t believe this was happening again.

Her leaves had warned her a long time ago that while her life would be a happy one, it would also be plagued with loss. Once upon a time, she’d thought Ben dying in the war and her sister in childbirth would be the end of it. What more would life dare take from her? What loss could compare to the loss of true love or a sister?

But that was the thing about the leaves. They weren’t a prophecy a person could fulfill and move past. They were a hint at things to come.

Still. When she’d lost Lilibet—not once but twice—it had nearly undone her. Probably would have if she’d had any other choice but to pull herself together for the girls.

Falling apart was a luxury she didn’t have. What oldest daughter did? Her job was to hold her family together, be steadfast as an ancient hemlock in a thunderstorm.

So she was. For everyone.

But now?

How could she possibly do it again?

This wasn’t fair. It was too much.

Her sweet girls.

Milly was already gone like a thief in the night over a week ago. Ruthie was taking Frances to her new school on Monday. Already, the house had grown too quiet.