CHAPTER FOURTEEN #2
There were plenty of times where we were unable to give a grieving family what they wanted for their loved one’s funeral.
I did what I could to make the dead as close to how they had looked in life as possible, but some deaths were simply too messy and disfiguring to cover up with some makeup, and it would be a disservice to everyone involved to go through with it anyway.
We were always honest about our abilities, albeit gently, but sometimes, depending on the situation, we made exceptions.
Brandon’s crushed skull was one of those, after his sister wailed through the pain of her broken heart and begged us to try to put her brother back together.
“All I ask is that you try,” I’d heard Leonard say, and I’d promised that I would do what I could.
"Anyway,” I said, pushing the sight of her sodden face from my mind, “what's going on with you and Shelby? Trouble in paradise?"
Shawn dropped his eyes to the tabletop, using his fingertips to trace a knot in the wood. His face seemed to be in a permanent scowl as his jaw clenched and unclenched once, twice. Something was clearly troubling him. I wondered if this was only about his relationship … or …
Does he know?
Tension tugged at my spine as I quickly took a drink of free soda to swallow down the rise of panic.
No. I've been careful. He knows nothing.
How would he find out?
Unless he’s been following me …
No. Stop. I’m going to drive myself crazy if I keep this shit up.
I released the air from my lungs, hoping I could will my nerves to loosen up a bit. Hoping I could act normal … if I was capable of being normal again.
Was I ever normal?
"I was going to propose to her," Shawn finally admitted quietly.
I slowly lowered my glass to the table. "Wait, what?"
He nodded, but wouldn't meet my eye. "I bought a ring a few weeks ago, before … before Leonard …"
“You didn’t tell me about that,” I interrupted, nearly insulted that this was the first time I’d heard about his plans.
Shawn shrugged. “Yeah, I … I dunno. I didn’t really tell anyone, to be honest. I don’t know why.
I just …” He lifted his hand to scrub a palm over his mouth and down his chin, dropping it back onto the table with a gentle thump.
"I mean, I love her, right? I … I can see myself with her for the rest of my life, you know? I'm happy."
"Well, if you're happy, then, yeah, why wouldn't you get married? You guys have been together for a long time."
Yet his expression looked as conflicted as ever. "We've never talked about marriage though.”
“In all the time you guys have been together, you’ve never talked about what you want in life?” I asked, my brow furrowed.
I had never been in a relationship, and I didn’t think I’d know the first thing about how to make a woman happy. But I figured it was a fairly common thing to discuss future plans at some point. How would you know if you were compatible otherwise?
He shook his head with a sheepish, almost-guilty look on his face. “No. We’ve never really talked about the future or anything like that. I just sort of … assumed, you know? And I bought a ring, thinking that's what should come next, and I was gonna ask her, but then Leonard went ahead and died."
He was killed, I wanted to say.
He would still be here if it wasn't for me, I wanted to say.
But I bit my tongue, swallowed, then replied, "Yeah, things have been a little, um … crazy … with everything.”
Shawn nodded as if what I'd said wasn't the stupidest thing to ever come out of my mouth. "Honestly, I've barely seen her over the past couple of weeks or so."
"She came to the funeral," I offered.
"Yeah, she did. But she left right away. Didn't hang around afterward. Didn’t come back to the house. Fuck, did she even come to the cemetery? I honestly can’t remember.”
I lifted a hand in a weak shrug because, honestly, I hadn’t noticed either. I’d been too busy thinking about Gerald Crowley and the murder staining my soul.
And Analise.
I was always, in some way, thinking about Analise.
I wished I could stop … but I couldn’t.
“Anyway,” Shawn continued, “I talked to her last night, and she said this is all too much for her. That I'm too sad."
I frowned at that, suddenly very present and no longer lingering in a warehouse, removing the head from a gargantuan man named Tick.
"Too sad?" I repeated, disgust heavily laden in my tone. "Leonard died. The man was practically our father."
"I know," he said, nodding. "That's what I said. And she told me he wasn't my father. That he was a nice guy who saw a charity case and—"
"Oh, fuck that," I cut him off, shaking my head. "No. You're going to break up with that bitch."
And then I'm going to kill her.
No. No, I'm not. Stop it.
Shawn's eyes met mine then, a crushing sadness worn plainly on his face. "I have to, don't I?"
"Listen, you don't have to do anything," I said. "But I sure as hell wouldn't want to marry a woman who talked to me like that, especially after losing someone as important as Leonard. Abso-fuckin'-lutely not. She can fuck right off with that bullshit."
"Yeah," he replied softly, dropping his sorrowful gaze again and nodding. "I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around … all of it. All the shit with Leonard …” He ran his hand over the back of his neck. “I just never would've expected her to say something like that."
I lifted my drink again to take a sip as I said, "No, I understand that."
The conversation stalled as Shawn sat back in his seat and grabbed his phone from off the table. His brow was set into a determined scowl as he tapped across the screen for a few moments, and then with a sigh, he laid it back down.
"There," he said. "I told her we need to talk."
"Good for you," I replied, already worried she'd somehow talk him into reconsidering his decision to break up. "And, hey, I'm sorry. It fucking sucks."
"Yeah, it does," he replied before deflating with a long sigh. “But … I dunno. Maybe it’s better I learned about this now, instead of ten years down the line after we’ve been married and had a couple kids.”
That was Shawn. Rational. Capable of finding the silver linings, no matter how dark the clouds above his head happened to be.
He’d adopted that mentality easily after we moved in with Leonard and all our lives changed—quite literally—overnight, and that was how I’d known he was the best of the three of us.
He was good.
Far better than me—that was for damn sure—and I knew it now more than ever.
He deserves to get married, I thought, a pang of sadness stabbing into my heart. He deserves to have a family and a life.
It crossed my mind then that I should leave and get as far away from the funeral home as I could to ensure the safety of the last two people I truly cared about.
But logic began an immediate game of tug-of-war with paranoia, as that scared little voice in my head insisted that, if I left, nobody would be around to guard the door and prevent the devil from coming inside.
My attention was snatched away from my jumbled thoughts as our food was brought to our table, and in a silence that was less than comfortable, we began to eat.
Across from me, Shawn kept his gaze cast downward, focusing everything he had on his burger.
But there was a crease between his brows, the physical evidence that something was eating away at him, and the little voice in my head told me it wasn’t just his dying relationship with his long-term girlfriend.
Is it me?
I took a bite of my burger, chewing slowly as I looked ahead, observing as he kept his head down and looked at something on his phone.
He was trying to look busy, but nothing could hold his attention as he scrolled.
Bouncing from one application to another.
He shifted in his seat and barely touched his food.
I wanted to ask what was eating away at him.
Normally, I would. But it was funny, the way we pulled away from the people who mattered most the moment we suspected we were the problem.
As if a momentary, forced distance could soften the blow and make it matter less when they inevitably turned on you.
What if he knows?
Fuck, what would I do?
Maybe he really had followed me to the massive estate in Hollow Cove.
He could've been masked, just like me, and I wouldn't have known any better.
He could've witnessed Leonard's death, just as I had, and known all this time that the story I’d told was nothing more than a tall tale to save my own ass.
And his, I reminded myself. I'm protecting him too. Him and Isaac.
But if he knows …
I swallowed and turned away, as if to cast away a terrible, intrusive thought before it had the chance to take life.
No. Don’t go there.
"So, um …” Shawn began with heavy reluctance.
Here we go.
“There's something else I wanted to talk to you about.”
I tried to act surprised as I replied, "Oh, yeah?"
He exhaled, shifting his jaw before shaking his head.
He was hesitating and notably uncomfortable—troubled even.
But he wasn't scared. If he knew what I'd been up to, if he knew about my recent association with Gerald and the things that had happened at his birthday party, wouldn't he be afraid? Ike might not be, but Shawn?
The guy was easily shaken.
He still slept with a night-light, for fuck's sake.
And just like that, Analise and her fear of the dark came to mind.
She was never far from my mind.
I knew about the demons that lurked in the shadows of Shawn's bedroom.
Who was waiting for her?
"You know what? Maybe I shouldn't say anything," he finally said, giving his head a firm shake and grabbing a fry from off his plate.
"No, come on. You can't leave me hanging like that. What's up?"
"Honestly, it's gonna sound insane."
I nearly snorted as I muttered, "Try me."
He popped the fry into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment before sighing and saying, "All right. So, you know how I started helping Leonard with the books? And how I've been transferring all of his freakin' composition notebooks into the computer?"