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“He’s a mean son of a bitch and a hell of a nasty bastard when his blood is up, and it was already up, wasn’t it? He’d killed Boggs, and you could place him out on Far Cry that night, and he damn well knew you owed him for that crash but not enough to cover for a murder. Not enough for a good kid like you, am I right, Chass?”
Dad’s shaking his head, the rain splattering off the barrel of the gun, each drop breaking into hundreds more, all of them spinning in the light. “You don’t understand—”
“I do understand, goddammit,” Bristal shrieks. “Jesus Christ, I grew up with Jamisons, and I know some of us go bad, and a few worse than that. He had you, didn’t he? He had you running scared from the minute you woke up in that passenger seat, and you were terrified every day that he’d rat you out. So when you show up to find a dying girl, he digs his claws in just a bit deeper, upped the ante and made sure none of it would ever see the light of day.
“He made you kill her,” Bristal says, her voice dropping low again. “He made you kill her, and you dug the grave together.”
A low rumble of thunder rolls across the west; a flicker of lightning branches in the sky. Rain pelts my cheeks, pooling around the bones of the dead girl at my feet.
“Is that true, Dad?” I ask.
“He said . . .” Dad pulls in a deep sigh, words that have been stale for thirty years finally crawling out. “Dover said it didn’t matter. Said she was good as dead, and it was true. She couldn’t have lived. Lydia . . . her breath . . . she was foaming—”
“How’d you do it?” Bristal pushes, her voice cold iron. “How’d you kill her?”
“He held her hands,” Dad says. “I covered up her nose and her mouth. It only took a minute.”
“Oh, Jesus . . . Dad,” I breathe, my heart breaking. I can feel it, his pain, in this place, thirty years ago. The pressure of his father’s gaze and the demands of being a Chass, the knowledge that he had already fucked up once, and that Dover would throw him to the wolves—always anxious for a taste of Chass blood.
“She’s been down here thirty years,” Bristal says. “Each day damning you a little bit more. You couldn’t come clean, could you?”
“No,” Dad says, his gun arm straightening. “And I’m certainly not going to now. Lydia,” he says sternly. “Move.”
“What?” I ask.
“He wants you to move so he can shoot me,” Bristal says, her voice flat.
“What? Dad, no! You can’t shoot Bristal!”
He takes a step closer, the gun not wavering. “You need to move,” he says again. “It’s just a Jamison girl. There are probably five more back at home.”
“Three!” I shout, rage taking over incredulity. “There are three other Jamison girls back at her home, and Bristal is my friend. I’m not going to let—”
I’m shoved from behind, and I go down hard, clipping my teeth on the flashlight. The shovel flies through the air, hitting Dad square in the chest. His shot goes wild, and I hear the bullet zip through the overgrowth near my head. Dad falls over backward, his light spinning away, as Bristal lunges forward, stepping on my hand. Bone crunches and I scream, but she doesn’t pause, her bare feet flashing in the beam of my dropped light, as I realize she must have slipped out of her muddy shoes so that she could move faster.
And she is flying, diving for the shovel before Dad can get to his hands and knees. She swings and he ducks, the metal zinging as it clips the top of his head, and a chunk of scalp flies. Dad yells and goes for her legs, but she dodges him, raising the shovel above her head, ready to bring it down in a crunching blow.
“Bristal! No!” I yell, finally moving, crawling on my hands and knees through the muck, my injured fingers curled around my light, hot needles of pain shooting through them. My good hand hits something cold and hard in the mud and I grab it, coming to my feet with the gun. I swing around, my light illuminating the two of them, Dad bleeding from the temple, eyeing Bristal, who stands above him, lips in a snarl, shovel raised, Denise Halverson’s grave between them.
“I already busted one skull tonight, Chass,” Bristal says, rocking on her heels. “I don’t have to be done.”
“No, Bristal—wait,” I say, stepping forward, keeping my light on both of them, the gun pointed somewhere between them. Dad takes advantage of the distraction, knocking Bristal down. She falls into Denise’s grave, and the shovel flies, Dad crawling after it, blood running freely down the side of his face. Bristal screams and erupts from the grave, grabbing his ankle and dragging him backward. He kicks her in the face, and she falls to the side, boot tracks embedded in her cheek and blood streaming from her nose. Her head swivels, searching for a target, but the light in her eyes is dim, her gaze unfocused. Dad raises the shovel, ready to bring it down.
“STOP!” I scream. “Dad—no!”
My voice breaks on the word Dad, and he pauses, the shovel held high in midair. His eyes go to my gun, and I adjust my grip, fingers cold and clammy against the wet metal.
“Lydia,” Dad says calmly. “Think about this—think hard. Nobody has to know. It’s been quiet for thirty years, and it can stay that way.”
“Fuck that,” Bristal says, her voice groggy as she spits a mouthful of mud to the side. “You’re not putting a girl in the ground and walking around like your shit don’t stink. Henley forgot about her, but I won’t let it stay that way.”
“They’ll forget about you, too,” Dad says. “I made a deal with the devil a long time ago so that I could have a future. Everything I ever did was for family—the one I had then, and the one I have now.”
His eyes shift to the gun in my hand, my shaking fingers. “Think about everything you’ve done, Lydia. Everything you’ve worked for. You molded your life to fill a very specific résumé—and nowhere does it say that your dad is a murderer. You got what you wanted—Harvard, Columbia. You’re in, kid. Take what you’ve worked for and let everything else go.”
“Dad . . . ,” I say, my voice shaky, the gun heavy in my hands.
“If you let this happen, I’m done,” Dad says, eyes locked on mine. “You’re done. If you let this happen, I can’t help you get through college. I can’t provide for your mother.”
