Chapter 63
WILLIAM
William felt it instantly, cool as the rain, the sense that he was not wanted.
He was not sure what he’d expected: for Shay to throw herself into his arms, for Shay to yell at him to run for help.
Instead, she was looking at him with something akin to anger.
Almost a mirror of the man, whose face was malevolent, his eyes and mouth set into stone.
“Jesus, William,” Shay said, thrusting her arm in the direction of Haven House. “Go back to the house.”
“Who is this?” The man’s voice was higher than William thought it would be. He was wearing a thin blue shirt, unbuttoned over his overalls. It strained at his shoulders. William was nearly his height, but the man was likely twice his weight, and his teeth were small and discolored.
“It doesn’t matter,” Shay said. “He’s leaving.”
“No, I’m not.” William took a step closer to them. “What’s going on?”
The man was silent, but William could sense his fury in the shallowness of his breath and the twitching of his thumb.
Even in the rain, William could see that his skin was irritated and peeling, blistered from the sun.
Though he felt Shay’s anger, he also sensed her fear of the man.
He stood too close to her, near enough to grab her neck, to strike her mouth.
There was a nick right above his ear, a scab of dried blood from shaving his head, and William saw the man holding a long, thin blade, scraping it across his scalp.
He put his own hand into his pocket, feeling for the knife.
“They want money. I’m not going back with him, so they want money,” Shay said. Her dress was so wet it appeared to be weighing down her body, and William wished he still had his jacket, that he had something to offer her.
“What?” William asked.
“If I want them to leave me alone, they’re demanding some of Andrew’s money.”
William almost laughed. A part of him felt relief, that Joel was right and she had not asked for these people to be here, but also it seemed impossible, that somehow, on this strange island, where he’d held death so close, where he’d scarred a boy with a bottle rocket and his mother and sister had slipped further away from him, money was somehow—again—what everyone thought they needed.
“It’ll get worse,” the man said. “You know how bad it can get.”
Shay shook her head, staring at the damp grass. “I told you in my note, I won’t talk to journalists or that lawyer, I won’t do anything, if you just—”
“Come on, Shay, that’s not how it works now. And you know, with your father having worked for the Tribune—”
“I haven’t talked to any of the people he worked with in years.”
“How can we trust that?” The man’s voice was almost gentle. “You have to show us we can trust you again.”
The ocean was so close, the waves stronger from the storm, towering to great gulps of water.
The cliff broke off just a few feet from them, and William could just make out the glittering rocks below.
Even with Shay’s flashes of anger, she seemed diminished, stripped down by fear and exhaustion, and he felt for the first time the magnitude of what these people had done to his sister.
He felt how she had felt, sitting in a cold metal chair, petals of her hair falling to the floor.
“I think you should go,” William said to the man, surprised by his own words.
The man took a step closer to him, and William was struck by his smell.
Pungent, rancid sweat, as if he had not bathed for days.
Somehow, even more than the man’s size, this made William fear him, the sense that this man was an animal, that he had lived on the island like a scavenger, sleeping in the marsh, lying in wait like another cottonmouth.
William rubbed his thumb against his switchblade, feeling for the release.
“William.” Shay’s voice was a warning. It was the same tone she had used when he threatened to drop out of high school. But that was a different Shay. She was stronger then, and even though she would never admit this, now it was different. She needed him.
“Listen to your sister,” the man said.
William did not move, and the man sighed, like he was being left with no choice. He took another step forward along the cliff’s edge, shoving William’s shoulder.
At his touch, William barreled forward, gripping the man around his wide waist. At first, he had the advantage of surprise, which he heard in the man’s oomph and felt in his stomach’s brief softness.
But then the man’s muscles contracted, and he wrenched one of William’s arms back, swiftly bending it at such an angle that William felt a pain unlike any he had ever known, the sharp, blinding pain of wrongness, the sense that his body was not meant to move in that way.
He fumbled in his pocket with his free hand, feeling for the knife.
He pulled it out, struggling to find the release so the blade would unsheathe.
But then he felt the click. He pulled back—for a breath, to disentangle himself from the man’s strong arms, angling his fist so that he could drive the blade into his side, knowing that this was the only moment he would have, that if the man saw the knife, he would grab William’s wrist and pry it from his fingers.
There was no time for thought. There was only a split second and the brute force of momentum.
He raised his arm, and William felt the word don’t pulse in his stomach, or perhaps he actually heard it—his sister’s voice.
There was a flit of white, and then only the somber gray of the rain, the gray of the ocean.
Somehow, the man was no longer in front of him, and when he turned, he saw only Shay at the cliff’s edge, barefoot.
Her hand over her mouth. He had not realized until that moment that she wasn’t wearing shoes.
The man was gone, the descent so fast that William did not see him fall—he barely saw Shay push him—and even when William peered over the cliff, his heart silent in his chest, there was only dark water, the foam silver in the moonlight.
“It’s not so far,” Shay said. Her voice was insistent as she stood next to him, staring at the bay. “I couldn’t let you, and I’m sure Jim—he can swim.”
They waited, but all they saw were the waves.