Page 137

“They panicked. Kids panic. They hurt themselves.”

Grady panicked. Of course he panicked. He was nine and alone in the dark, and he slept with a cat-shaped night-light Maisie made him until he was eight. I picture small wrists. The same wrists I used to hold when I swung him around the yard until he shrieked. Part of my jaw cracks under the pressure of my teeth.

I shove him toward the mattress. He catches himself against the wall. One of the chains sways beside his shoulder. Metal tapping concrete. He stares, but he’s not seeing me. Fear shows in his ashen skin and bursting breath. Good.

I take the loose restraint at the end of the chain and close it around his wrist. The click echoes off the metal walls. I wonder if Grady heard that sound.

He jerks back. “What the fuck are you doing?”

I secure the other. It puts him exactly where they were. Heller pulls once against the chain. Then again. His breathing changes.

I crouch several feet in front of him. My sickle rests loosely against my knee. “Where is Grady?”

Heller looks at the blade. “Who?”

I’m on him before the word fully leaves his mouth. The sickle kisses across his upper arm. Shallow. Fast. His scream tears through the workshop.

I step back. “You knew my name.” Blood begins darkening the sleeve. “You knew my face in the dark. Don’t insult me.”

Heller’s breath hisses through his teeth. He studies me for a long moment. Then something in his face gives, and what replaces it is worse. “The little Batman.”

The floor drops out from under me. Grady spent all of October growling I’m Batman at every chicken on the farm. And to this man, that’s all he was. A costume.

My hand is shaking. I press the flat of the sickle against my thigh to stop it. “Grady Cannon. His name was Grady.”

His eyes find mine. And this time there’s no pretending. “He wasn’t supposed to die.”

The entire room changes. I hear the wind. The metal siding. My own breathing. Nothing else. “What did you say?”

Heller swallows. “It was an accident.”

My hand tightens around the sickle. “What happened?”

“He was sick.”

I don’t move. Heller rushes on, as though enough explanation can somehow build a bridge across seventeen years. “He started wheezing. Wouldn’t stop. I gave him water. Soup. I had blankets. I kept him warm.”

My insides hollow out. “You gave him soup.”

“I didn’t know what else to fucking do.”

“He had asthma.”

“He was all alone. And I didn’t know he was asthmatic when I took him. He kept saying he couldn’t breathe.”

My heart cracks open. I’m sixteen again. One block behind. Batman disappearing into a crowd. Gage, wait up.

I see Grady sitting on this mattress. Nine years old. Scared. Trying to pull air into lungs that won’t cooperate. Waiting for me. Because I always came.

“He got worse fast,” Heller says, voice filled with remorse. “I went out. I bought medicine. I tried.”

The pharmacy purchase. Jubilee found it. A timestamp on my brother dying.

“You could have taken him to a hospital,” I grit out. Heller says nothing. “You could have left him outside an emergency room and driven away.” Still nothing. “But then somebody might have seen you.”

His eyes shift. There it is. That’s the whole fucking answer. My brother died because this man chose himself.

“You let him suffocate.”