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“Probably not,” I say.
“Should we tell him to?”
“I would have if I thought it’d do any good,” I say. “He mightrefuse to check. Or he’ll check and, if it’s not there, he’ll tell himself he feels it.”
“He’s a good brother,” Madison says.
I put an arm around her shoulders. “He is. He’s always been good to Sadie, and I’m sure he’s good to his kids.”
She nods. Then she says, “Doyouthink she’s still alive?”
“I don’t know. But as long as she’s moving, he’s going to insist she is.”
“Even when he also saw that dead guy moving.”
“Yes.”
I wait for her to ask me what I think is going on. When she doesn’t, I know it’s not lack of curiosity—Madison inherited enough of that from me—and I realize the simple and wise truth of her silence. Does it matter what’s going on? Whether we’re dealing with zombies or something else? No, because it’s not like pinpointing a cause to solve a mechanical issue. There’s no step-by-step answer. We can only deal with what we see.
“Hey,” Jayla says as she comes over. “Could I get your help cleaning up in the kitchen, Mads? Maybe rustle up something for dessert.”
Madison’s expression says I’m not the only one whose stomach churns at the thought of more food, but she gamely nods and follows Jayla. I back into the great room. Kit comes out of the hall, where he’d been checking locks for the dozenth time. Seeing me alone, he waves to the sofa. I walk to it and sit, and he lowers himself beside me.
“So,” he says. “Moving on to another topic that this really isn’t the time for, but right now, it feels like it’s the time for everything we need to say.” He pauses. “That sounds ominous. I don’t mean it like that.” He pushes on. “But since we’re stuck in a holding pattern and trying to forget what’s going on…”
I nod. I know what he’s going to talk about, and I want to find some excuse.
No, Kit, you’re right—this isn’t the time.
The words won’t come. No words can come. Just that mute nod.
He takes that nod as his cue. “Earlier I said Sadie told me something. Lied about it, I realize.”
Now my words come in a blurt. “She claimed I confessed that Garrett didn’t… do what he did.”
He frowns, as if he can’t quite hear me, though it’s completely silent in here. “What?”
“She said I confessed that Garrett didn’t ‘take advantage of me’ or whatever euphemism we care to use. That I claimed I’d lied or been mistaken.”
“No.Absolutely not.” He stares at me a moment, and then presses back into the cushions, his eyes squeezing shut. “That’s what you thought when I said it was about Garrett. Of course it’s what you thought.”
His eyes open. “If Sadie ever said that to me, Laney, I’d never have spoken to her again. Hell, I didn’t even realize your friendship broke up because she didn’t believe you. She said it was the awkwardness after what happened and…” He flails. “I was Jayla’s little brother. No one was telling me anything I didn’t need to know. I overheard my parents talking about what Garrett did, so I knew that much, but the rest…” He meets my gaze. “If I knew Sadie didn’t believe you, I would never have worked with her. Sure as hell wouldn’t have hooked up with her, evenbeforeyou and I got together. I can only imagine how bad that must have seemed, me keeping ties after what she did to you.”
“I kept ties with her, too,” I say. “I never blamed you.”
“Well, I’d have blamed me.”
He turns toward me, our knees touching. “What she told me was only tangentially about Garrett. She said…” He inhales, breath hitching. “She says you and her talked about how we got together, how we got married. You joked about there being alcohol involved. Then your conversation got serious, and you admitted it made you uncomfortable.”
“Made me…?”
“That I took you on a Vegas getaway, as friends, and then there was drinking, and we got married while you weren’t… weren’t sober. That it reminded you of what happened with Garrett.”
I jerk back. “She saidwhat?”
He opens his mouth, but I wave off the words.
“No, I get it,” I say. “That was shock, not disbelief. You’re telling me that Sadie said I compared ourweddingto when Garrettrapedme?”
