Chapter Eleven #2
And just like that, all the remnants of Sarah’s old life are stashed away.
Yes, it’s easy to believe Ben would drive away from the house, his head clouded by rage, then abandon the car and walk into the woods.
Drawn by the call many men have heard before him.
Do you hear us screaming? Come, you can scream with us.
Another tithe paid to the Suicide Motel.
Elijah ties up the garbage bags and brings them to Caleb.
He takes off his mask and smiles, wincing from the cut on his lip.
“Good as new,” he says, waving a gloved hand at the gleaming parlor.
Sarah could convince herself that Ben never showed up if it wasn’t for the coppery tang of his blood on her tongue.
Caleb peels off his own mask and pushes sweat-damp hair off his forehead with the back of his wrist. “I’ll move the car and then take these to the town dump. I have to go anyway to toss the broken glass and crap from the motel. No one’s going to find that suspicious. Elijah, get your coat.”
“He can’t go out like that,” Sarah says.
Elijah’s face is a war zone. Caleb exhales. “You’re right. Will you two be okay here alone?”
“Of course,” Sarah says. “I’ll get him cleaned up.”
Caleb nods. “First aid kit is in your bathroom. I’ll be back soon. Lock the door.”
When the door closes behind him, Sarah turns the deadbolt and snaps into action.
She finds an unopened bag of peas in the kitchen freezer, wraps it in a tea towel, and hands it to Elijah.
He presses it against his darkening eye.
She doesn’t want to sit in the parlor ever again, so she says, “Come on,” and heads up the stairs.
She leads Elijah to the main bedroom. He hangs back in the doorway, pain in his good eye. “He can’t hurt you anymore,” she says. But the memory still does, she knows that. She takes his hand and gently guides him across the floor.
The room is warmer than the rest of the house, like it’s the heart of Sweetside Manor. It is the heart after all, if it had once hosted Jacob Vass. Its dark, rotten heart, beating with ugly secrets. It’s appropriate she’s sleeping here.
Elijah sits on the bed and picks up the beat-up copy of Macbeth. “Who would’ve thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” he quotes from behind the bag of frozen peas, his split lip quirking.
Sarah grimaces. “Please don’t joke, Elijah.”
She finds the first aid supplies and dabs the cuts on Elijah’s face with antiseptic ointment. He whimpers, twitching a little, and she remembers how he’d curled up in a ball to deflect Ben’s kicks.
“Oh my God. You must be—” Sarah snares the hem of his paint- and blood-spattered shirt and gently tugs it over his head.
His torso is lean and pale, a boy’s body even though he’s not much younger than her.
None of the skin is broken, but a mottled red runs up and down his arms and along his ribcage, casting the white lines of old scars in stark relief.
His chest rises and falls slowly, his eyes sad as if his mother’s ghost is looking out from his face.
Sarah wonders whose ghost looks out from her face.
She touches one blushing rib with a fingertip. “I don’t know how to tell if anything’s broken.”
“They’re not. I know what it feels like.”
“Oh, Elijah.” This sad, lonely boy took the brunt of Ben’s anger, and his father’s. Her eyes well up with tears, and she puts a hand on his bare shoulder. He leans his cheek against it. His skin is cold from the frozen peas. He smells like blood, but it doesn’t turn her stomach anymore.
It smells like freedom.
It smells like being alive.
It smells safe.
She blinks, releasing a tear down her face, and she realizes she’s happy.
They sit quietly, Elijah’s cold cheek pressing into the back of her hand, listening to their breathing and the call of the wind.
A warmth blooms in the pit of her stomach.
Not the full-body flush she feels around Caleb, but the coziness of a favorite sweater.
Elijah’s easy to be around; he wears his feelings on his sleeve.
As opposed to Caleb, who shuttles between an easy smile and a smouldering tension in his upper body, as if he’s fighting his inheritance of violence.
Elijah doesn’t seem to want anything in return. He’s just glad of the company.
As for what Caleb wants, she doesn’t know.
After a minute, she helps Elijah put his shirt back on. “Did you like it?” he asks.
“Like what?”
“Killing Ben.”
She laughs nervously. “No, of course not.”
“You don’t have to lie to me,” Elijah says. “I didn’t mean if you liked the gory part, but the look of surprise on his face. Did you like that?”
Sarah closes her eyes and remembers that moment. The delicious rawness of her fury. Another tear follows the first, trickling over her upper lip, warm and salty as Ben’s blood. “Yes,” she whispers. “Yes.”
“The moment when you knew he couldn’t hurt you anymore.”
“Yes.” Sarah’s voice wobbles with guilt. “I wanted him to get up so I could hit him again. I wanted him to know I killed him, that I won and he lost.”
He nods as if she’s given the right answer.
“Do you wish you’d done the same to your dad?” The question spills out before she can stop it. But she knows he won’t be offended. She’s killed for him. They’re beyond offending each other now.
His eyes stray to the old recliner. He doesn’t have to say anything. She understands. The answer is yes, yes, and yes again.
“I see you,” he says softly. “You don’t have to pretend anymore. It hurts to pretend, doesn’t it?”
He touches her cheek, and the knot she’s been holding inside her for so long uncoils, and suddenly she can breathe. I see you. He sees her and accepts her.
“Are you sorry?” he asks.
“No,” she says, and this time she feels no guilt or shame at the answer.
This is what freedom really feels like. Not the anxious flight up Highway 11, or the relief at your abuser’s death, but the lack of weight on your soul.
This is what Ben felt, and what Caleb must feel too, as men moving through the world without having to gauge how much space they take up.
Sarah’s face hardens with the truth. “No, I’m not. He should’ve died the first time.”
“Good.”
He gifts her his sweet, innocent smile, and for the first time in a long time, Sarah feels at peace.