Chapter Twelve
Elijah lends her a spare hooded sweatshirt, as hers is headed for a trash dump, hopefully never to be unearthed.
Caleb returns a couple of hours later with an early dinner, and Sarah realizes they never had lunch.
Who can eat, anyway, when there’s a body in the garage, waiting to be buried in the spring like a gladiolus bulb.
She thinks of Jacob Vass and Stuart McGee and Joseph Singh, lost in the woods and shrouded by snow and dirt and time, their bones planted in the soil and blooming into white pines.
Maybe it’s the trees that scream, not the wind, with the voices of the disappeared.
Elijah takes a seat at the kitchen table while Caleb lays out an extra-large pepperoni pizza and a Caesar salad.
Sarah grabs plates and forks and sits with them.
No one says anything. Caleb doesn’t even comment on how she knows where everything is in the kitchen.
It seems natural, her being there. She’s family now.
They share everything. If she brought the virus into their house, it’s too late, they all have it.
If she brought violence, it’s made itself at home.
Sarah and Caleb sit on either side of Elijah. He takes both their hands in his. “Let us give thanks,” he says, bowing his head. Caleb coughs but says nothing.
Sarah silently thanks the woods for taking Ben, and Elijah releases them.
She bites into a slice and chews tiredly, watching the snowflakes streak past the kitchen window.
“Sarah?” Caleb says.
Both he and Elijah are staring at her. She glances down and realizes tomato sauce is dripping between her fingers, like blood. Caleb hands her a napkin. She takes it, but licks the sauce off her skin instead. There’s no need to be polite anymore. Elijah meets her eyes and nods slightly. I see you.
Elijah wolfs down the last of his salad and stands up. “I’ll be in my studio.”
“Elijah, you’re in no condition to work. Your face looks worse than the pizza, and I’d hate to see the rest of you.” Caleb turns to Sarah. “His ribs?”
Sarah shakes her head.
“Rest, Elijah. Please.” Caleb gets up and touches Elijah’s shoulder. Elijah looks so small and young, slouching in front of him, as if he’s Caleb’s son and not his brother. Caleb could crush him easily between his hands, or with just a word.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Sarah says, and Caleb glances back at her gratefully. “I don’t know how you can see anything out of that eye anyway.”
Elijah studies the linoleum, his mouth a sullen line. “All right.”
Caleb enfolds him in a gentle hug. “I’m glad you’re okay. I always am.”
“I know.” He wriggles out of Caleb’s arms like a cat and slips out of the kitchen. The staircase begins to sing his steps.
Sarah starts to collect the dirty dishes, but Caleb waves her away. “You should rest, too. It’s been a long day.”
“It’s been just as long for you.”
His smile is weary, but genuine. “Taking care of people is what I do.”
Taking care of Elijah, and likely taking care of his father when Jacob Vass’s drunken rages petered out.
Taking care of the Suicide Motel’s customers.
And now feeding and sheltering her and helping her bury the body.
Sarah drinks in his face for a long second and then reluctantly leaves the kitchen.
She climbs the staircase. The house knows her step now.
Soft and harmless, like the face she puts on for people.
The floorboards yield gently beneath her socked feet.
Elijah’s bedroom door is closed. She pauses, feeling the urge to go in and tuck the sheets around him, smooth the hair off his swollen face. But she should let him rest.
In her room, she stretches out on the bed, fidgeting as restlessly as the swaying trees outside.
How can Caleb expect her to sleep when Ben is cooling off in the garage?
Trying to lie still only encourages her thoughts to run amok.
She clambers off the mattress and paces the floor.
If her body is busy, her brain can’t stop to think, can’t run through those last moments with Ben in the parlor.
The house sighs as Caleb climbs the stairs, his footsteps stopping down the hall. A door closes. Pipes rattle as a shower turns on. Water blasting against porcelain drowns out everything else.
Sarah glances out the window above the bed.
Dusk has fallen, softly, like a blanket.
The wind puts its shoulder against the side of the house, again and again, and she sees Elijah’s figure walking into the woods.
She recognizes the bulky shoulders of Jacob Vass’s shearling coat.
The trees part for him, crowning him with their snowy fronds.
He is their king. No, only a prince. Jacob Vass is their king.
The king of the disappeared. The first to enter the breach from the Suicide Motel.
A soft knock interrupts her thoughts, and Sarah realizes the shower has stopped.
“Do you have a minute?” Caleb says, which is a strange question to ask when she’s trapped here with all the time in the world.
She opens the door. Caleb looms over her. He doesn’t chide her this time for leaving the door unlocked.
“What is it?” she asks.
Behind him, Elijah’s bedroom is still closed.
Did she imagine him walking into the woods?
Maybe she actually saw Jacob Vass on the day he disappeared.
On a snowy night like this, space seems nebulous, irrelevant, and time has no meaning anymore after months in lockdown.
Maybe on the night she came to the Suicide Motel, it was Jacob Vass who watched from the window of the house, and the day Caleb first took her to the backyard, it was Jacob’s figure behind the plastic of the sunroom.
A sentinel for the next person who longed to vanish into the woods.
Caleb runs a hand through his damp curls. “I know the last time I stood here, you weren’t happy with me.”
The last time he’d stood there seems like many lifetimes ago. He raises his eyes to meet hers, and she forgets why she’d been unhappy. She can’t imagine why anyone would be unhappy with someone with eyes as blue as his.
“I accused you of knowing nothing about me and Elijah. But I guess you do understand after all.” He wets his lips. “I want to thank you for defending him. He’s all I have.”
“It was my fault,” she blurts, because it’s always her fault. “Ben was my—”
“He wasn’t your anything. He was his own person, and he chose to attack Elijah. You did what you had to do to save him.”
“I’m sure anyone would’ve done the same.”
His smile is faint. “I doubt it. You’ve spent time with Elijah now. You don’t think he’s a little—off?”
“I think he’s very sweet.”
“He is, but he’s prone to impulses.” Caleb runs his hand through his hair again. “I lied about the knives the other day. We don’t have any because I got rid of them. I’m afraid Elijah will hurt himself.”
Sarah frowns, trying to remember what Elijah had said about the knives. Surely Caleb was the one with the storm inside him, like their father. Not Elijah.
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to protect him, and for someone else to come along and also—”
His voice breaks. Sarah says, softly, “Like you would have.”
“Like I would have.” His eyes darken; bright and clear one moment, a starless sky the next. Outside, the wind crashes against the house, demanding passage.
His gaze seizes hers. She can’t look away.
His usual easy charm and confidence have evaporated.
There’s no room for frills in the little space between them.
His face is open in a way that’s like Elijah but not like Elijah, because Elijah doesn’t make her skin burn from head to toe.
Elijah doesn’t parch the inside of her mouth with want.
“I’ve been alone for so long,” he says.
The blood sings in Sarah’s ears again, but this time it’s not her fight-or-flight reflex.
She reaches out and touches his cheek.
“So have I,” she says.
He’s so beautiful, as guileless as Elijah in a lot of ways. His hand flies up to cover hers. He closes his eyes and leans into her, his stubble digging into her palm.
“I see you,” she says. “You don’t have to pretend anymore.” You don’t have to pretend you’re holding it all together. “It hurts to pretend, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” he whispers. “Yes.”
His voice trembles. Something lurches in Sarah’s chest. It’s heady, this power. Maybe this was what was missing from her relationship with Ben. Caleb is a little scared of her, as scared as she is of him. Is this what love is really supposed to feel like? Desire wrapped in fear?
Yesterday she would’ve told herself to step back and say good night. Today she killed a man. And if she can kill a man, she can love one too, just because she wants to. Because she’s finally free.
Sarah slides her fingers down his cheek, tracing the strong line of his jaw until her fingertip rests in the dimple in his chin.
He takes her hand and presses his lips to her fingers.
At her gasp, he presses another kiss to the heel of her hand, then the tender inside of her wrist, looking at her through long lashes. It is a question.
She answers it by drawing him into the room and closing the door behind him.
“You don’t owe me anything,” he says. “I’m the one who owes you. Are you sure you want this?”
She turns off the light, drags his head down to hers, and kisses him.