Chapter 8
Eight
MARIS
It was dumb to stay in the graveyard and spy on the Sheep’s. It was dumb to get closer after their mother left with Ben in tow. I do both though because I’ve never been smart.
Smart would have been me taking that scholarship to the University of Washington I was offered instead of staying in town to help my grandmother run the newspaper.
Now she’s gone and I’m alone and hated in this fucking town and still working on that newspaper.
I’m going to die working on the newspaper. No doubt about it.
Definitely not smart.
I creep towards the gravestone I know is Mike’s.
Brian is there, pacing, hands in his hair.
He looks like shit. I hate him almost as much as I hate his father.
The town didn’t want to have Mike buried here at Mariner’s Rest at first but after a few petitions from some of Aria’s closest friends to Father Paretti, St. Edward The Confessor’s Catholic Church made the exception to have Mike Sheep interred within a stone’s throw of my parents’ graves.
Mike Sheep came to my fucking house pissed off because my father laid his ass off from the paper fifteen years before.
In all that time he couldn’t move on. My father fucking died and somehow Mike Sheep just couldn’t let it go.
Laid off because the economy took a nose dive and it was just one of those things in a place like Vesper Point.
The staff took a hit, whittled down to a half dozen, four of which are still kicking around with me now.
My father didn’t have a single malicious bone in his body.
He was a good man. He did his best to love and care for the town he’d been born to.
Left for college and came right back. There was never anywhere else for my dad but Vesper Point, never anyone but my mother for him because she was this town.
She was the Martinez, not him and he loved her so much, loved the legacy of what it meant to be a Martinez that he took that name proudly. He was a Covington by birth but it was my mother’s name he loved as fiercely as he did this town.
“Fuck you, Martinez!”
Mike Sheep’s yell echoes in my ears. It’s Brian who yells now, his voice bounces off the gravestones around us like a ping-pong ball at the rec center. It fills my ears and at that moment, I can’t tell Mike’s voice from Brian’s. Father, son, what’s the difference?
I feel dizzy.
I brace my hands on the monument in front of me and pause.
I lean my forehead against the cool stone and the world spins on by, everything moves around me at ninety fucking miles an hour and that’s when I fuck up.
My leg shakes and my foot slips out from under me and I kick a loose rock.
It skitters away from me and hits a headstone near Brian.
He sees it the second it does. I know he does because he goes silent, there’s no more yelling from him.
It’s just complete silence in Mariner’s Rest. I pull my foot back with a wince and hold my breath even though it’s idiotic.
The wind howls on, the tree limb over head clatter and shake like reaching fingers.
“Who the fuck is there?” Brian growls.
I hesitate, think for a moment that I’m not going to answer.
I shouldn’t answer. I know the safest thing I can do is to stay hidden, or as much as I can when he probably caught sight of my stupid foot.
Brian and his idiot brother Ben haven’t hidden their hate for me.
To them, I’m not the woman that survived a break in, or protected her family home, I’m the murderer that killed their pathetic father and the whole town agrees with them. Sometimes I hate this place.
I think it’s the fact that this town has taken their side over the past two years that I stand up from my hiding spot with a glare on my face.
I’m brave with anger hot in my veins, because why not?
I’m sick of this shit. There are three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and out of those days I’m obliged to eat shit three hundred and sixty-four days.
Too bad for Brian today is the one fucking day I’m not game to walk away.
“Boo, bitch,” I say.
Brian jerks back like he’s been slapped.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” He points a finger at me like one of those villains in a Scooby-doo cartoon.
I half expect an idiot dog to come running out begging for a snack with a pack of teens but there’s no one else.
We’re all alone. Poor little idiot Brian.
He knows better than to be alone with me.
Brian’s hands shake, the finger he points at me trembles when he forces himself to take a step forward.
The movement is supposed to be menacing. He wants me to be scared of him.
I smile at Brian when he comes forward again. “I’m going to fucking make you pay.”
“Me? Pay?” I feign a clueless look on my face and tap my finger against my chin. “Like cash or credit? Do you take Apple Pay? Venmo? Gee, I didn’t bring my purse.”
Brian’s eyes bug out of his head. “You fucking bitch. You’re evil.”
He’s one to talk. I’ve done more write-ups about him and his fucking record for trespassing and peeping in the police blotter than I have fingers and toes which doesn’t sound like a whole lot but come the fuck on, it is.
Brian is scum.
“Better to be evil than whatever the fuck you are.”
“Evil, evil, bitch,” he says, doubling down on his ‘evil’ slander like any man that can’t scare a woman when they want to. He spits the word at me like a curse.
I lift a shoulder in a shrug and lean against the statue to my right.
It’s an anchor with a crescent moon, it belongs to one of the Owen’s.
One of the captains that helped save the town during the Storm of the Century.
I can’t remember the story or if the captain made it out of the storm, but it’s more than what people will say about Brian.
He’s a fucking loser just like his shitty father.
I trail a hand along the curve of the crescent and lift my eyes to the moon overhead.
It’s almost full, hanging low and fat in the sky like an overripe peach.
It’s so close I could reach right up and pluck it from the sky.
I keep my eyes on the moon when I speak. “Evil is subjective, don’t you think? Why, I mean what’s evil to you could just be, I dunno, bitchy to someone in France.”
“What the fuck are you…” he blinks at me and shakes his head before going on. “You killed my father. There’s nothing subjective about that, you psycho. What the hell are you doing here? Stalking me?”
I look down from the moon and flick a finger at him. “Stalking you? That’d be a reverse uno for you, wouldn’t it?” I bark out a bitter laugh and cross my arms.
My words hit their mark. Brian draws himself up and tries to look bigger than he is, but he’s flustered. Bullseye. Direct hit, Maris.
“They never proved any of that shit was me,” he says, because Brian has utterly convinced himself that anything he’s done wrong is excusable because his dad is dead. Big fucking whoop.
Join the club.
We all have dead dads around here.
“I really don’t give a shit what they found. Just like I don’t give a shit about what you do.”
Brian’s lip curls in disgust. “Then what are you doing here, Maris?”
Maris.
I jerk back like he slapped me when he says my name.
“I-I…” My voice trails off. I’m surprised he said my name.
Normally it’s bitch or psycho, murderer, whatever strikes his family’s fancy when we run into each other in town.
For a second, the anger in me wavers, like a flame in the wind, and it almost goes out.
I almost turn on my heel and walk right out of Mariner’s Rest, content to spend another night at home alone with Isla and drinking myself to sleep.
I swallow hard, my sharp edges starting to crack. “I,” I start again but that’s as far as I get before Brian pours gasoline on the embers of my anger.
“Oh, that’s right, your worthless parents died today, didn’t they?
You fucking orphan.” He gives me a mean smile.
It feels like a knife sliding between my ribs.
“You’re lucky they died before they saw what you became.
They would have welcomed my dad if they had.
Would have let him fucking slit their throats like he should have to get away from you. ”
The rage of that night pushes itself out of me like thorns rooted in my bones. It slices my skin and forces itself free until I’m razor sharp. A knowing. I felt this before, but only once.
I felt like this the night I killed Mike Sheep.
Everything around Brian and I slows down just like it did that night.
The wind fades away, there’s no more rustling of leaves or the odd chitter of a bat flying overhead.
My rage is quiet, it’s still, it’s all consuming, screaming like a starving ghoul, fingers reaching, maw open and teeth snapping for something new to chew.
I’m going to eat Brian alive.
“Is that right?” I smile. I bare my teeth and push away from the statue to walk towards him. My smile is a weapon, a fucking warning of what’s about to happen. We both know it.
“I said, is that right?”
Brian’s eyes shoot from my mouth to my eyes. “I-yes,” he manages to get out. “That’s right, bitch.”
“And you really think your limp dick dad had it in him to kill anyone?” I ask Brian.
I’m goading him to right where I want him.
I’m ready for whatever comes. I made my decision the second I snuck up on him but Brian is still coming to terms with it.
I should help him along. It’ll make things neater if we’re on the same page.
“Because I gotta tell you, I don’t think he did, and if anyone would know what your dear old dad was capable of, it would be me, right? ”
“Shut the fuck up!”