CHAPTER TWO
“Abraham!”
I sit up abruptly and watch in horror at the sight of his fat hand tangled in her hair, her bare feet kicking against the floor of my bedroom as he drags her away from my bed.
Her stuffed bunny falls from her hand as she reaches out for me. Its floppy body tumbles to the floor.
“Abraham! Help me!”
“Anna!” I shout, my voice breaking with desperation.
I climb from my bed and try to run, try to reach her, but my legs are stuck, frozen, glued to the ground I stand on.
All I can do is stare and watch as he takes her, wrenching her away from my reach and hauling her down the hall to his room.
And she screams and screams and screams my name, over and over and over again.
“Abraham! Abraham! Help, Abraham, please! Abraham!”
“Abraham!”
“Anna,” I muttered, half dreaming, half asleep, my head moving erratically.
“Abraham! Help!”
My eyes fluttered open to stare at a wall of boxes. In a disoriented haze, I wondered where the hell I was and what the hell I was doing there while the old, gaping wound in my heart throbbed and bled out onto the floor.
How something from years ago could still hurt so badly after I’d since lived through so much more pain—I could never understand it. How the nightmares could feel as fresh as if they’d happened yesterday.
Then I remembered.
We ran away.
We’re at the funeral home.
We were sleeping.
“What are you boys doing in here?!”
Well, that was a voice I didn’t recognize.
I clambered to my feet to find an older guy—with a head full of gray hair and a wrinkled face—holding Ike by the collar of that ugly windbreaker. Shawn was awake, too, standing a foot away from them, a bottle of soda held high in his hand like it had the chance of protecting him.
“Let him go,” I warned, taking a step toward the old guy and my brother.
“What are you kids doing in here?” the man asked, still clutching Ike’s collar.
From my back pocket, I pulled out my butterfly knife and flipped it open, exposing the sharpened blade and holding it up.
“I said, let him go,” I grumbled, closing in on him.
The old man’s gaze flickered with wide-eyed fear at the sight of my blade.
I supposed the height I had on him helped a bit too.
I might only be sixteen, but the last time I’d checked, I was closing in on six foot five.
This old guy couldn’t have been any more than five foot three—and that was being kind.
“So, you’re the ringleader,” the guy guessed.
From the corner of my eye, Shawn—with renewed confidence now that I was awake and sufficiently armed—approached from the other side with his trusty soda bottle.
There wasn’t a bone in my body that wanted to do any harm to this guy.
As far as I was concerned, he hadn’t done anything to deserve it.
But want and need were two entirely different things, and if I had to slash his hand or arm to get Ike away from him and make a run for it, I wouldn’t think twice.
The old man met my eye and asked, “Is your name Abraham?”
Fuck you for that introduction, Ike.
“Let him go, and you’ll never see our faces again.”
“How old are you, Abraham?”
“That’s none of your fucking business.”
I had to give it to the guy; he never flinched. Not even with a five-inch blade centimeters from his face.
He looked away from me, and I was sure he had to be crazy. Who the hell looked away from a guy holding a weapon?
He knows you’re not going to do anything. He’s calling your bluff.
Cut him.
My hand started to tremble, and I focused on steeling my nerves. I didn’t want to hurt him. I just wanted to get my brother and leave. But this old fucker was being difficult.
So, cut him.
Teach him a lesson.
Fuck. I don’t want to.
“Where are you boys from?”
“It doesn’t fucking matter where we’re from!” I shouted, rushing toward him and pressing the blade’s tip to his cheek, just below his eye. “Let him go. Do it now, and we disappear.”
His gaze returned to mine, and he asked, “And what if I don’t?”
“Then I swear to fucking God, I will shove this knife into your goddamn eye.”
“I don’t think you want to hurt me, Abraham.”
“You don’t know shit about me,” I said, pressing the knife more firmly to his cheek.
“I know, if you wanted to hurt me, you would’ve done it already.”
The tone of his voice, the softness in his eyes …
God, who the fuck was this guy, and why was he acting like he cared? He didn’t know me! He didn’t know us! Yet I was struggling, stalling, faltering, and I couldn’t get myself to do what I needed to do because he was too fucking nice.
So, while still holding the knife, I took Isaac by the arm and yanked him away from the man’s hold … and I did it easily. I shot Ike a murderous glare for not pulling out of his grip sooner and took one, two steps backward, holding my knife out.
“Let’s get out of here,” I ordered Shawn and Ike.
The old guy stuffed his hands into his pockets with that strange, sad look still in his eyes.
“Do you boys have somewhere to go?” he asked.
“That’s not your problem, is it?” I replied, smirking.
He nodded, relenting. “No, I suppose not. But can I at least give you boys something to eat before you go?”
The offer gave me pause, and I stopped moving backward toward the door. I raised a hand, silently telling Shawn and Ike to freeze. They did as I’d said, but I couldn’t mistake the sound of Shawn’s trembling exhale.
“And why the fuck would you do that?” I asked warily.
“Because you look hungry,” the old guy said.
I was hungry, and I was certain Shawn and Ike were too. We hadn’t swiped much from that little shop this morning, and who the hell knew when we’d grab our next meal … or if it’d be a meal at all or just a bag of chips?
“Bram,” Shawn hissed, his anxiety and fear mounting, “let’s go. Please.”
I ignored his plea as I lowered my blade, folded it in, and asked, “What’s the catch?”
The old man’s white brows pinched as he shook his head.
“No catch. I was just about to make some lunch when I came in here to grab a couple of things and found my window broken. Then I saw the three of you sleeping on my floor.” He offered a small, friendly smile as he added, “Actually, I wouldn’t mind the company, as long as you don’t mind that I’m not the best chef. ”
Could this dude be for real? We had broken into his business, and he was offering us something to eat. There had to be something else he wasn’t asking for. People weren’t nice for no reason. No, he wanted something. He had to.
“I’m not sucking your dick for a shitty sandwich, old man,” I warned through a clenched jaw.
Fuck, from the look on his face, you would’ve thought I’d told him to eat a pile of his own shit.
“What have you boys been through?” he asked, clearly horrified as he pressed his hand over his heart. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
Maybe he really is just a nice old guy, I considered, narrowing my eyes and studying the sad look etched on his weathered face.
“Bram! What the fuck are we waiting for?!” Shawn asked, begging.
I couldn’t blame him. Nobody was nice to us. Not without a price. They always needed something from us. To behave, to listen, to kneel or bend over. And that made it easy to believe that nobody was nice to anybody for no good reason.
But maybe we’d been wrong about that. Maybe there was one nice guy in the world, and he just so happened to live in this house for the dead, and we’d won the lottery by breaking through his door.
Then, before I knew what I was doing, I was tucking my knife back into my pocket and nodding, but not without a hint of reluctance.
“We’ll eat,” I said, making the decision for us all.
Shawn was exasperated, gripping his hair and throwing his head back. “Bram, are you fucking kidding me right now?!”
“We will eat. We have to eat,” I told him, turning to pin him with a glare. “Then we’ll leave.”
The old man nodded softly, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and I thought maybe that shred of happiness …
Fuck, maybe it was real.
And maybe I wanted it to be.
***
The old man introduced himself as Leonard Llewellyn, owner and head funeral director.
He led the group of us through the main floor of the house, past rooms meant for viewings and funerals and closed doors, concealing secrets I was dying to unveil.
The place was full of carpeting, white wainscoting, and old-looking furniture that could probably sell for quite a few bucks, but I wasn’t sure I could casually sneak a whole fucking chair out of here without Leonard noticing.
“You boys sneaked in on the perfect day,” he joked. “Place is dead right now—no pun intended.” He looked over his shoulder with an amused grin, as if he expected us to laugh with him.
We didn’t.
After clearing his throat, he went on, “Of course, that could always change, if the Grim Reaper decides it’s someone’s turn to die, but as of right now, no such luck.”
Shawn and I exchanged a quick glance, one where he silently asked, Are you sure we can trust this guy?
He often questioned things like that—and for good reason. We all did, but him especially. Trauma fucked us all up a little differently, and for him, his ability to trust that adults wouldn’t expect nefarious things of him had been shot completely to shit.
Most of the time, I couldn’t blame him. A lot of people we’d had the unfortunate experience of meeting weren’t nice, let alone trustworthy. But while I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, I knew Leonard was someone who didn’t mean us harm.
I wasn’t sure I’d felt like that about an adult before. Not ever.
Well, not counting Mom.
Ike’s and my mother had never wanted to hurt us. But she had failed to protect her children by dying in an alleyway when I was just four years old and Ike was still a baby.