Chapter 1 #2
that you think I’d touch the mark on my chest and summon King Sorrow before your time.
I want you to have the weeks ahead. You deserve that—time to see the people you love.
Time to make arrangements. Maybe you did some things that shock me .
. . maybe you made some choices that just about break my heart.
But you also did a lot of good for a lot of people.
Some of them—most of them—probably weren’t worth it.
God knows how many lard-asses you brought back from heart attacks they paid for with a lifetime of cheeseburgers.
You’ve spent a quarter century looking after Tana Nighswander, who doesn’t even know the father of her own baby.
But whether their lives are worth a damn or not, they’re here because of you, and I’m sure their love means something to you.
See ’em while you can. Get a good life insurance plan and you can set Tana and her kid up for decades.
Make your peace with the world and your loved ones. ”
“You want to help me make peace? I know what you did to Arthur, but I want to hear you say it. You ran a blade through him
down in that hole,” Gwen said, “didn’t you? Because if you hadn’t, he would’ve struck down King Sorrow.”
“No, Gwen,” Colin told her. “I didn’t kill Arthur. You did. The day you told him you didn’t love him. Everything after that was just waiting. His life was functionally over. And
I think he always knew, deep down in his heart, you rejected him because he was Black.”
At that Gwen staggered back a step, her eyes suddenly bright. She looked winded, as if he had shoved the blades of those scissors
into her breadbasket.
“You goddamn liar,” she whispered, but she was fighting tears now.
He thought his work was done and started to turn away—which was when Allie leapt on him. She was screaming as she threw her
bony fists at his chest. She had all the weight and mass of a twelve-year-old, but he wasn’t ready for it, and the impact
carried him to the ground. The scissors sank into his knee, piercing his iceberg-colored denims and pushing into the thigh.
“Take it back!” Allie screamed at him. “Take it BACK you take it BACK you take it OFF HER!”
She went on pelting him with her fists, even as Donna got her arms around Allie’s waist and hoisted her kicking into the air.
The door to the back of the Caddy was open, and Donna heaved Allie through it, stood in front of her when she tried to get
back out. The day pulsed unsteadily around Colin, blood thrumming behind his eyes, the light dimming and brightening as if
clouds were racing in front of the sun. He looked around. People had stopped walking to their cars, were staring his way in
alarm.
Gwen dropped to one knee beside him. He tried to get an elbow up, drive her away before she could grab for him, and she pushed
his arm aside. She had something in one hand, a white pad.
“You need to get something on that wound,” she said. “If you stuck yourself in the femoral, you could bleed out in five minutes.” She was pushing his trouser leg up.
That was a wadded-up rag soaked with dragon’s tears in her hand. She meant to kill him right now, in front of everyone. Somehow
she had planned this. He felt a certain calm admiration—it was exactly the sort of thing he might’ve done. He put his hand
in Gwen’s face and shoved her back onto her ass. At the periphery of his vision he saw some kid, a flushed, copper-haired
college student, pointing a cell phone at him.
Donna slammed the car door, turned around, holding up her hands, getting between Colin and the crowd. “Sorry! We have an unwell
family member. Crowded places sometimes set her off. We’re all right here!”
Gwen sat in the lane, on her rear, holding a white handkerchief in her hand. A new thought occurred to him then, sudden and
unexpected, that the cloth in her hand was just a cloth, that she genuinely meant to stanch his bleeding. He swiftly shoved
the idea aside. He had sentenced her to death, and no real human being would attempt to provide first aid to their murderer.
The thought was absurd—as absurd as her claim that she had not meant to revenge herself upon him for Arthur. Of course she
had.
“Well, Colin,” Gwen Underfoot said. Seven weeks to live and she was shaking her head and smiling as if he was the one who deserved pity. “Maybe I am going to die, but I can think of worse things. I could have to live another forty
years as you, for starters.”
Donna held out a hand and Colin caught it, came limping to his feet, forcing a smile. His pant leg was drenched with blood.
People gaped at him the way they’d gawp at a horrific car crash.
“Maybe I should’ve built a new health center!” he joked. “I’ll put that on the to-do list.” Donna had his arm over her shoulder,
and he hopped around the front of the car to the passenger seat. Forget the health center—he was going to need the Podomaquassy
Urgent Care Clinic. So much for canapes at the dean’s.
“Kid with a phone,” Donna murmured.
“Fuck,” he said. “Maybe I can slap it down.”
“You just slapped down a woman trying to offer you emergency aid in front of a crowd,” Donna said. “You’ve probably done enough slapping folks for one day, son.”
He flinched, quashed the urge to push her aside too. He hated to hear the Florida panhandle in her voice, that lazy countrified
drawl. It gave him a weird feeling, like he was cozied up to Van.
Allie was sobbing breathlessly in the back seat when they pulled out. Gwen sat on the curb, looking for all the world like
she had nowhere to go and nothing better to do than sit there and enjoy the morning.