Chapter Eight
Sarah scrapes her feet on the doormat, boots feeling like they’re made of lead. “Was that Uncle Isaac?” Elijah calls from the kitchen.
“He says hi,” she says weakly.
“Guess he wasn’t happy to see you outside.”
Sarah mumbles an assent as she slips off the coat.
She hopes Graham is okay. He can’t be hurt if he’d driven off.
She feels a rare surge of affection toward him.
He came to pick her up after all. But he can’t again.
He might call the police, but like Isaac, they’ll probably tell him it was his fault for stopping in a strange town during a pandemic.
The door swings open again, admitting Caleb and a frigid blast that slaps Sarah’s already numb cheeks. Caleb turns the deadbolt into place, his ear to the door. When the sound of Isaac’s car fades, he turns on Sarah, blazing with a fire she’s never seen before. “Did you call your brother?”
Sarah backs up through the dining room to the kitchen. Jacob Vass’s laughing face taunts her from the wall of photographs. “No, I—”
“What’s going on?” Elijah says.
“Nothing, Elijah. Did you call your brother? After I asked you not to?”
“I—” She can’t find the words. She doesn’t want to lie, can’t lie when his glare has her pinned like a butterfly under glass. Elijah had said Caleb had a storm inside him, but it’s not a raincloud, it’s a cloudless sky that’s too bright to look at. Fierce and hot and impossible to hide from.
“Shit.” He yanks off his jacket and slams it over a dining chair.
“I’ll pay for the long distance—”
“It’s not that. You nearly got your brother killed. What were you thinking? Especially after what those assholes did at the motel? What do you think they would’ve done to you if I hadn’t shown up?”
It seems stupid now, especially when Caleb’s reasons are perfectly valid. After everything that happened to her, she hadn’t stopped to think it might happen to Graham, too.
“It’s not her fault. I told her she could call him,” Elijah blurts out.
Caleb looks at Elijah, and for a single, terrifying second, Sarah can see Jacob Vass in his face. Something incandescent flares in his eyes, and he shoulders past her into the kitchen.
In one brutal motion, he tears the phone off the wall and slams it on the table.
Both Sarah and Elijah jump at the noise. Half the plug sticks out of the socket, snapped off by Caleb’s wrath. “Fuck,” Caleb says, gripping the back of a chair, and Sarah’s terrified he’s going to break that too. “Fuck.”
Sarah inches backward until she’s standing in the doorway.
This is the man who can’t be trusted with knives.
She sees it now. Go, the voice at the back of her head urges over the roar in her ears.
Just go. It’s the same voice that whispered to her when Ben had slumped over the kitchen counter, blood seeping between his fingers as he clamped his hand to his neck.
The fury drains from Caleb’s face, and he’s Caleb again, not his father. “Oh God. I’m sorry, Sarah. It’s not because of you. I should’ve done this years ago.”
He glances at Elijah.
“He didn’t do anything!” Sarah rushes forward to stand in front of Elijah, who quivers like a rabbit.
Caleb’s shoulders go limp. “No. Of course not. Sarah, please return to your room. You shouldn’t be down here. It’s for your own safety.”
“Will you be okay?” she asks Elijah.
“He’s fine,” Caleb says.
“I was asking Elijah, not you,” she snaps.
Both brothers look surprised at her outburst. Caleb straightens and lifts his chin.
The fire in his eyes has extinguished, and he regards her with a cool, assessing gaze.
She’s done it now. She’s shown herself. Revealed a bit of the stress that’s been boiling inside her for so long. She’s no longer nice.
“I’m fine, Sarah,” Elijah says. “Go. He’s right. You shouldn’t be down here.”
Sarah looks from Elijah to Caleb. A vein throbs at Caleb’s temple, but his fists have uncurled from the chair. Elijah crosses his arms and nods.
Go. Just go. She plods out of the kitchen and drags her feet up the stairs.
Caleb’s voice rises from the kitchen when she reaches the landing. “Why did you let her make that call?”
Holding her breath, Sarah closes her door—from the outside—and shuffles back to the top of the stairs, praying the house won’t give her away.
“So her brother could come. What’s the harm?”
“You know we can’t have people here. What if—” Caleb’s voice chokes off. “We can’t let Dad win. I’m only trying to protect you.”
“I can protect myself,” Elijah says stubbornly.
“I know you can. But—”
The railing squeaks under Sarah’s trembling hands.
“Shush,” says Caleb. “What was that?”
A chair scrapes against the kitchen floor. Sarah flies down the hall and slips back into her room. She locks the door, wincing at the tell-tale click.
She recognizes this part. The honeymoon phase is over. Everything is great until it’s not, and you wonder what you did wrong and how you can get the good feelings back.
You know what you did wrong, a voice says in the back of her head.
It sounds like Ben.
She collapses into the recliner. Her nose wrinkles at the musty scent, but she doesn’t want to get up again.
She wants to sink into the upholstery as if it’s quicksand and never come out.
Let the spirits of Jacob Vass and Stuart McGee and Joseph Singh lure her into the woods.
Then no one will be able to find her, least of all Ben’s ghost. She’ll finally be free.
The wind whistles outside the windows. It sounds less like screaming now, and more like singing.
Sarah glances down at Bulfinch’s Mythology, splayed open at the page about the Sirens.
Odysseus had asked his men to tie him to the ship’s mast so their song wouldn’t tempt him to his doom.
Maybe that’s why Caleb and Elijah keep telling her to lock the door and stay inside the house. Otherwise the woods will claim her too.
A rap sounds on the door. “Sarah?” Caleb says. “I’ve got your lunch.”
She doesn’t want to talk to him. She wants to be left alone and let the wind and the woods devour her troubles. “Just leave it outside.”
His leaden sigh penetrates the wall between them. “I’m sorry. I overreacted. Could you please open the door? I’d like to apologize to your face.”
He sounds tired, and that’s what convinces Sarah to slide off the recliner. Ben never sounded tired. His rage drew from a bottomless well. And he certainly never apologized unless he had no options left.
Sarah unlocks the door and lets Caleb in. He crosses the room and sets a tray on the vanity. He hasn’t put a mask on. There doesn’t seem to be any point now. Somewhere, they’ve crossed a line, and the air she breathes is the same he and Elijah breathe.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” he says.
She doesn’t respond, only waits for him to make excuses, to blame her. It’s always her fault, isn’t it?
But it was her fault. She phoned Graham when he’d asked her not to.
He’s not like Ben, she reminds herself.
But what if he is?
But what if he isn’t?
Sarah stands rooted to the spot, hands suddenly sweaty, paralyzed by the electricity of attraction and fear.
“And I know what I did with the phone was excessive. But I’m scared for Elijah. You don’t know him like I do. He’s not as good with people as he seems.”
He drags a hand down his face. Lines bracket his downturned mouth, and he resembles his mother more than his father now.
“And I’m scared for you, too. Your brother could’ve been killed.
That’s not an exaggeration. Old Man Doherty really thinks the virus is a Chinese conspiracy to undermine his way of life.
As if China cares about his shitty pool hall. ” He snorts.
She can’t help but smile at that. He smiles back.
Make nice. Accept the apology, because otherwise, the storm will break again. And it actually was her fault.
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have called Graham.” She’s careful to keep her face contrite. “I’m becoming too much of a nuisance. I should just go.”
“Are you in a hurry to leave?” He smiles again, and her stomach flutters with yearning and dread.
“No, of course not. But there’s no chance of my car getting fixed soon?”
He shakes his head. “Lars is in bad shape, and half of his staff tested positive. Uncle Isaac’s furious.”
“Is there a bus I could take to Timmins?”
“The bus stop’s in the middle of town, across from the Tim Horton’s.”
Where Graham got shot at. The color drains from her face. Caleb adds, “Sarah, if there’s anything you want or need to make your stay here more comfortable, you only have to ask. Let me know what I can do. I want you to be happy.”
There’s only one thing that will make her happy. “Help me get out of Sweetside.”
“You know I can’t do that,” he says, sadly. He turns and ambles for the doorway, his keys jangling from the carabiner on his belt loop. Like a jailer.
“Lock your door,” is the last thing he says, but she doesn’t see the point. She’s trapped here anyway.