Chapter 11 Arthur
Arthur
A silver sleeve of Pop-Tarts sat on a bench near the door to the holding cell where I’d been left, waiting, for hours. I bounced a knee, holding a cloth against the cut in my eyebrow.
“You need stitches.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to talk to the monster right now.
The motion sensor had long since flickered off, casting the spartan room in pitch blackness. The darkness was cold, so like the icy state the monster had forced upon me when it tried to take its vengeance on Lenny Walker.
The monster bristled. “You wanted to hurt him too,” it said.
But I wouldn’t have. That was the difference.
With the chemical burn of cleaner stinging my nose, I replayed the events at the cottage.
The memorial service I couldn’t finish. The fight with Lenny.
The slip in control that allowed the monster to puppet me like a violent doll under its command.
And Jack. Large, wonderful, powerful Jack hitting his knees, face distorted in pain because of me.
The shock of hurting him had ripped me free of the monster’s hold too late to stop the flow of death into his tree, and into him. My poison hadn’t killed him—yet—but the agony of what could have been left a buzz of anxiety crawling over every inch of my body.
I hated small, tight spaces and how trapped they made me feel.
It reminded me of how it felt when the monster took me over, as though even my skin was too tight to comfortably hold my pounding heart.
I’d wanted to rip myself open and yank my skeleton out of my skin, carve off the viscera and breathe, breathe, breathe.
I was too small a container for all the bad inside me.
Even tapping the side of my leg brought no relief from the pressure weighing heavy on my chest. This wasn’t new.
I’d always known something wasn’t right about me, but I’d never known how to fix it.
I didn’t even know how to start. I’d tried carving the monster out, tried starving it out… but it was in my bones.
Eva’s face flashed before me. I’d seen her furious, I’d seen her soft, and wild, but fear was an emotion I’d sworn never to inflict on her again, and I’d broken that promise less than a day after my return.
The door to the hall snicked open, and a man wearing a navy tie cinched to his throat stepped inside, triggering the motion-sensitive lights back on.
Dane Walker had been a newly appointed deputy the summer I’d come to stay with the Moreaus.
Somewhere along the line, he’d acquired the position of sheriff. It should have been impressive.
But dead men weren’t meant to get promotions.
When Dane dragged over the Pop-Tart bench, sitting spread-legged on the other side of the bars, my already chilled body went full subarctic. I couldn’t help the hollow ache, or the confusion spilling into goose bumps across my skin, at the sight of Dane Walker, hale and whole.
Not a dead man after all, but still my ghost.
“You did the right thing, Arthur.”
I didn’t answer. The only reason I’d given myself up was because I was terrified of the monster inside me getting out again. For so long, I’d tried to minimize the damage I caused just by existing, but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t a strong enough cage.
But I couldn’t tell him any of that.
Dane surveyed me carefully. “I want to help you,” he said.
Suspicion collected inside me. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” Dane scrubbed the back of his neck. “Jack always thought you were innocent. Isobel insists on it. And I’d like to avoid any more trouble.”
That was just like the man I remembered. Never one to actually face the problem if there was a way to avoid it. No wonder Lenny had walked all over him for so many years.
My stomach soured. “Where’s your brother?”
Dane’s eyes widened in surprise. “What?”
“Is he here?”
In the permeating silence, I could almost hear the tick of my heart, speeding faster.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to hear that Lenny had gotten off scot-free.
Maybe I deserved to be locked up, but so did he.
Lenny had trespassed into the Moreau family home.
Lenny had been the one to start the fight.
“He should be in here too,” I snapped.
“Arthur—”
“No.” Lenny couldn’t get away with doing whatever he wanted just because his brother was the sheriff. It wasn’t right. “He attacked me.”
Dane studied me, then sat back, unhooking a pad of paper from his pocket. He flipped it open and clicked a pen. “Do you have any witnesses?”
“Your brother does a lot of things without witnesses.” The words seemed to unlock something inside me, and before I could stop myself, more raced out. “How are you even alive?”
It came out like an accusation. Maybe it was.
My first summer in Audrey had ended in a nightmare so horrifying that I couldn’t even think of it without bile rising in my throat. By the time I’d grabbed Eva’s hand to run that fateful night, I’d been certain Dane Walker was dead.
When a trail of blood from the cut on my brow leaked down my cheek, the monster darted our tongue out to lick the hot, iron bead off the bow of my lip. Questions pushed to the forefront of my mind. Eloquent questions, like How the hell? and What the actual fuck?
Most pressingly: Why have I spent my life running from your ghost?
“Frankly,” Dane said, his expression inscrutable, “I was hoping you could enlighten me.”
“Excuse me?”
The monster pushed its presence into my hands to stall the anxious tap of my fingers as Dane sat forward, rubbing the center of his chest. I tried not to think about the kind of scar that would form over a wound like that.
“I remember pieces from the reception,” he said.
“It’s all scattered, broken up.” Our eyes locked together. “But I remember you.”
The monster swirled in my belly. To quell the sickening churn, I braced my head between my knees. Cold whispered through me. “I could make the pain go away. You just say the word.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Summoned the strength to refuse. To linger. To stay Arthur. I didn’t realize Dane had asked me another question until he cleared his throat and I looked up to see him watching me expectantly.
“You’re just like them, you know,” Dane said, frustration leaking into his voice. “All four of you bend over backwards to keep each other’s secrets. What am I supposed to do with that?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. He’d made it sound like I still belonged to the Moreaus, when nothing could be further from the truth.
“You bruised my brother up real good. He could press charges,” Dane said, visibly exhausted. “It would be in Jack’s right to press them as well, if he wakes.”
The mention of Jack cut like a thorn.
“How is he?” I pressed.
“Stable, for now.”
The monster stirred nausea in my belly again. I needed to soothe it before I was sick. Fill the emptiness. “Can I have a Pop-Tart?” I asked, my voice cracking.
Dane hesitated only a moment before tossing me the foil through the bars. I tore open one end, my hands shaking, and was hit by the artificial smell of strawberry sugar. Nostalgia rose inside me. Mom had always kept a box of these on hand. They were her favorite flavor.
“It’s strange,” Dane said. “Secrets don’t usually survive in a town this small. Tongues slip, you know? Everybody knows everybody’s business.”
I tensed, swallowing a large bite of the too-dry pastry.
“Things were messy enough when you left,” Dane went on. “The doctors didn’t know what to make of my scar, or Jack’s condition, and my ex-wife didn’t want the press looking deeper into our lives.” He took a breath. “There was an investigation.”
I’d known there likely would be, and that I’d been a coward to leave town the way I did. Audrey was a snow globe that was constantly shaking, obscuring the truth with false snow. But I’d hoped to draw the town’s ire when I disappeared, giving them a scapegoat to take the pressure off the Moreaus.
Apparently, it had worked.
Dane watched me intently. “My brother remembers things from that night much more colorfully.”
What a diplomatic way of saying Lenny had been drunk off his ass. I struggled not to squirm beneath Dane’s stare.
“Why did you run?” he asked, his calm expression belying the urgency of his words.
Before I could dredge up a lie, the sound of rising voices came from just outside the holding cell. A knock sounded, and a guard peeked in. “We have a visitor,” he said.
“Not now, Grayson.”
A pale sheen of sweat glistened on the man’s forehead. He looked visibly uncomfortable as he cleared his throat. “I told her to come back tomorrow, Sheriff, but she insisted.”
That’s when I noticed the lichen slinking over the door’s threshold, and the smell of spring filled my nose.
Eva.
Dane must have clocked the edge to his deputy’s voice. He looked up, then sucked in a hard breath, his eyes darting back to me a moment. He stood. “Five minutes.” At the door, he looked back at me. “I meant what I said, Arthur. We can help each other.”
Then he was gone.
In the doorframe he vacated, the bee girl stood with her arms crossed, her expression a whetted blade. Eyes bloodshot, mouth hard, she stepped toward me, the door to the holding cell clicking heavily into place behind her.
When Eva reached the bars, she slipped what looked like a letter out of her pocket and shook it at me. “What the hell is this?” she seethed.