Chapter Nineteen Rot in Hell
nineteen
Rot in Hell
It hits me like a ton of bricks on Saturday morning.
My father is dead.
The man who brought me into this world is really, truly gone. After all these years. Killed by his own hand.
I think I was numb to it before. But the full weight of it comes to rest on my chest this morning and doesn’t let up.
All of these happy memories float to the surface.
I spend almost all weekend in bed, not wanting to eat, shower, or face the world.
By Saturday night, my cousins realize something’s wrong, and Sunday morning it comes to a head.
Jasmine wanders in and says, “Oh my God, are you feeling better yet?”
I shake my head. I told her I thought it was the flu, and she bought it. She even played nursemaid, bringing me some Tylenol and an extra pillow, and said she’d sleep on the couch last night so she wouldn’t catch anything. But now she’s clearly over her Florence Nightingale act.
“You’re worrying me, cousin. What’s going on?”
“I’m just tired,” I mumble tonelessly.
She leaves. A few minutes later, while I’m lying there staring at the ceiling, someone knocks. It’s Dan, who pokes his head in and says, “Get dressed, kid. I think you need some fresh air. Let’s go for a drive.”
As much as I hate to leave my cocoon, the look on his face tells me this is nonnegotiable. Besides, he’s probably right. I can’t hide in here forever, and fresh air does sound nice. I quickly change into sweatpants and a hoodie and meet him on the porch.
The car ride feels impossibly long, even though it’s only been five minutes since we left the house.
Dan chats about his job at the Anders Home and the new group therapy program he’s running at the juvenile detention center that his work has partnered with.
It’s admirable what he’s doing, helping these young people through hard times, but I can hardly focus on a word he’s saying.
When he finally steers the truck up the familiar drive, his motives for this outing become crystal clear.
I can’t bring myself to look out the window; the sight of my childhood home feels like a betrayal, though to who I don’t know.
I’m surprised the place isn’t crawling with true-crime fans.
With celebratory townsfolk. You’d think they’d be cheering, throwing parades.
The monster’s dead! But the entire area is quiet and deserted.
“You don’t have to do this,” I mutter to my uncle.
“Do what?” Dan plays dumb.
“I get why you brought me out here. You specialize in messed-up kids going through shit. But you’re not going to find the magic words to make me feel better, so you don’t have to bother. I’m fine.”
“You are?”
“Perfectly fine.”
“Great. Then it shouldn’t be a problem to take a walk on your old property.”
He’s backed me into a corner. I grit my teeth and nod. “Sounds fun.”
Dan parks on the gravel driveway outside the main house. I stare at those angry red words. ROT IN HELL. Whoever painted that graffiti got their wish, it appears.
For a moment, I feel the past pressing down on me. The windows are dark and lifeless, the paint peeling off the porch railing. It’s as if time itself gave up on this place the moment my mother died.
And now my father is dead too.
The man who haunted my nightmares, the man who ruined everything—gone. And yet there’s no sense of relief, no real closure. Only emptiness. Like a hole that keeps getting bigger the more I try to ignore it.
“Don’t be mad at me, kid,” Dan says, cutting the engine.
His tone is careful, as if he knows that one wrong word might break me.
“I thought it might help. You know, for closure. I’ve done this with some of the kids from the home, taking them back to places that hold bad memories and helping them work through it. ”
I nod again, not trusting my voice. I appreciate what he’s trying to do, but closure feels like a distant dream. What’s closure supposed to look like when your father was a murderer? When you’ve just found out he killed the mother of the boy you’ve been dating?
I can’t stop thinking about Everett. About Nikki. JP. About everything their family suffered because of my father. It’s unbearable.
We step out of the truck, and I follow him toward the clearing behind the house.
We walk in silence for a while, the only sound the crunch of leaves under our boots and the occasional rustle of wind through the branches.
Dan doesn’t rush me, doesn’t try to fill the silence with meaningless chatter.
He simply walks beside me, his presence solid and comforting, like it always is.
“I mean…fine,” I say, as if picking up a conversation we never started. “I might be a little sad about my dad. Because he was my dad. I know I shouldn’t be, because he was a monster. But he also did nice things for me. Only me, apparently. But you know…”
Dan doesn’t say a word, and I realize I’ve already confessed more than I wanted to. There’s something about him. He’s gentle, and kind, and he doesn’t push. He’s got to be the best counselor the Anders Home has.
When we encounter the first few birdhouses, I point at one that’s painted pink and covered with white stars. Or at least it used to be. The paint is so faded, you can barely tell what the hues are. But I remember. I painted it.
“See that one? That was one of my favorites. He climbed super high to hang it. I remember being so scared he was going to fall.”
Dan looks up at it and smiles. “You hung a lot of them?”
“Dozens. We even drew a little map so that we could track them. Dad was so concerned the birds wouldn’t have food, so he left seeds too.
Everywhere. Like a trail of breadcrumbs.
So when people call him the scum of the earth for killing those women, for going to the grave without saying where they are, I always think of that. The man I knew wasn’t all bad.”
“People rarely are.”
I look over at him. “You’re all good.”
“Nah.”
“What do you mean? You’re like a saint to your family. To this town.”
Dan is quiet for a moment, gazing at the birdhouses all around us.
“When I was twenty, I got into an accident,” he tells me. “A DUI. I was really stupid back then. Drinking like a fish, blacking out when I had too much. I wanted to marry your aunt, but your grandmother was dead against it. She thought I was a waste.”
That doesn’t surprise me. Gran was a tough old broad. She wouldn’t have taken kindly to her daughter cavorting around with a man who blacked out when he was drunk.
“But your aunt was stubborn. She ran away from home and never looked back.” Dan takes a breath and releases it slowly.
“That’s why she and your grandmother never talked.
Why she and your mom stopped talking. Sometimes I think that if I hadn’t been such a screwup as a kid, I’d have been more welcome in the family.
As it was, I took Maggie away from it. And I can’t help wondering if I hadn’t, if I’d been present, things with your mom and your father might’ve been different. ”
I stare at him. I never knew any of this. But he can’t truly believe he’s to blame for what happened to my parents. “It’s not your fault that you were isolated from Maggie’s side of the family.”
“If Maggie and Sarah had been on speaking terms, maybe Sarah would’ve confided in her about Gabriel. Maybe we could’ve helped her.”
“It’s not your fault,” I repeat.
He presses his lips together but doesn’t say anything. I suspect he doesn’t believe me.
“I have a lot of guilt too,” I confess. “My mom was trying to leave that night. And I held her up. I kept getting in her way when she was packing. Plus, he was a monster and I never noticed—”
“You were a kid. You did nothing wrong.”
I don’t believe him either. I’ve tried telling myself that same thing, over and over again. Somehow it never sinks in. I have a feeling that even now that he’s gone, it never will.
When we finally stop walking, we’re deep in the woods, shaded in a smaller clearing where the sunlight barely filters through the canopy.
I think Dad’s studio is near here. The small cabin where he drew his victims. Where he killed them.
According to the police reports Zed posted on Free the Sparrows, only a few drops of blood were found on the wooden slatted floor.
Dad’s cleanup job had been near pristine.
I stare at the ground, at the tangled roots and patches of moss.
“He killed Everett’s mom,” I say, my voice breaking the silence.
Dan rests his hand on the trunk of a nearby tree. He doesn’t respond right away, but I see the tension in his shoulders.
“Did you know her?” I ask him. “Leah Devereaux?”
“Yes. Of course. It’s a small town.”
“Why didn’t she go by Leah James?”
His lips quirk. “Because she was a stubborn, independent woman who didn’t ‘need a man,’ ” he says, his tone implying he’s quoting Leah directly. “Actually, for as long as I knew her, she never even wanted to get married. I think JP sweet-talked her into it.”
“How do you know all this?”
He hesitates before offering a small shrug. “Leah and I were high school sweethearts.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “You were?”
“Dated for a couple years. I thought we’d end up together, but she dumped me when she met JP.
He transferred to Crockett junior year. I was the kid who drank too much and raised hell in town.
He was the perfect quarterback who took her out on real dates.
Guess he was the better choice.” Dan laughs, but there’s not much humor in it.
I’m still trying to process this new information. “I didn’t know that.”
“No reason you would. It was a long time ago. After Leah and I broke up, I started dating Maggie. We were all friends for a while. JP, Leah, Maggie, and me. But after a few years, we drifted apart. People move on, I guess.”
I try to imagine it, the four of them intertwined in this strange web I never knew existed. Then I think of Everett, of the connection we never even knew we had.
I stare at my combat boots, and my thoughts swirl, confused and angry. Everett. His mother. My father.