Twenty-Eight

Sadie's wounds have been cleaned and bandaged, and we've given them half the blankets and pillows in the house, overcompensating in the guilt of leaving them outside as the temperature drops. There's a propane fireplace on the deck, and we made sure Garrett got that working and tucked himself and Sadie into a warm spot by the door, where we can see them.

As we gathered and shared whatever Garrett might need, we picked at dinner. Now that Garrett and Sadie are settled, we're moving around the room, checking the doors and tidying up—whatever else our numb brains tell us we need to do.

I walk over to Madison, standing near the windows.

"Are we sure she's alive?" Madison says, her voice low. "She's moved a few times but… She's really badly hurt, Laney, and her skin doesn't look…" Her voice drops more. "Normal."

When I don't answer, she looks over. "Has he checked for a pulse? Breathing?"

"Probably not," I say.

"Should we tell him to?"

"I would have if I thought it'd do any good," I say. "He might refuse to check. Or he'll check and, if it's not there, he'll tell himself he feels it."

"He's a good brother," Madison says.

I put an arm around her shoulders. "He is. He's always been good to Sadie, and I'm sure he's good to his kids."

She nods. Then she says, "Do you think she's still alive?"

"I don't know. But as long as she's moving, he's going to insist she is."

"Even when he also saw that dead guy moving."

"Yes."

I wait for her to ask me what I think is going on. When she doesn't, I know it's not lack of curiosity—Madison inherited enough of that from me—and I realize the simple and wise truth of her silence. Does it matter what's going on? Whether we're dealing with zombies or something else? No, because it's not like pinpointing a cause to solve a mechanical issue. There's no step-by-step answer. We can only deal with what we see.

"Hey," Jayla says as she comes over. "Could I get your help cleaning up in the kitchen, Mads? Maybe rustle up something for dessert."

Madison's expression says I'm not the only one whose stomach churns at the thought of more food, but she gamely nods and follows Jayla. I back into the great room. Kit comes out of the hall, where he'd been checking locks for the dozenth time. Seeing me alone, he waves to the sofa. I walk to it and sit, and he lowers himself beside me.

"So," he says. "Moving on to another topic that this really isn't the time for, but right now, it feels like it's the time for everything we need to say." He pauses. "That sounds ominous. I don't mean it like that." He pushes on. "But since we're stuck in a holding pattern and trying to forget what's going on…"

I nod. I know what he's going to talk about, and I want to find some excuse.

No, Kit, you're right—this isn't the time.

The words won't come. No words can come. Just that mute nod.

He takes that nod as his cue. "Earlier I said Sadie told me something. Lied about it, I realize."

Now my words come in a blurt. "She claimed I confessed that Garrett didn't… do what he did."

He frowns, as if he can't quite hear me, though it's completely silent in here. "What?"

"She said I confessed that Garrett didn't ‘take advantage of me' or whatever euphemism we care to use. That I claimed I'd lied or been mistaken."

"No. Absolutely not." He stares at me a moment, and then presses back into the cushions, his eyes squeezing shut. "That's what you thought when I said it was about Garrett. Of course it's what you thought."

His eyes open. "If Sadie ever said that to me, Laney, I'd never have spoken to her again. Hell, I didn't even realize your friendship broke up because she didn't believe you. She said it was the awkwardness after what happened and…" He flails. "I was Jayla's little brother. No one was telling me anything I didn't need to know. I overheard my parents talking about what Garrett did, so I knew that much, but the rest…" He meets my gaze. "If I knew Sadie didn't believe you, I would never have worked with her. Sure as hell wouldn't have hooked up with her, even before you and I got together. I can only imagine how bad that must have seemed, me keeping ties after what she did to you."

"I kept ties with her, too," I say. "I never blamed you."

"Well, I'd have blamed me."

He turns toward me, our knees touching. "What she told me was only tangentially about Garrett. She said…" He inhales, breath hitching. "She says you and her talked about how we got together, how we got married. You joked about there being alcohol involved. Then your conversation got serious, and you admitted it made you uncomfortable."

"Made me…?"

"That I took you on a Vegas getaway, as friends, and then there was drinking, and we got married while you weren't… weren't sober. That it reminded you of what happened with Garrett."

I jerk back. "She said what?"

He opens his mouth, but I wave off the words.

"No, I get it," I say. "That was shock, not disbelief. You're telling me that Sadie said I compared our wedding to when Garrett raped me?"

"Not like that. She… You know how she is. She circled it and hinted, said a few things outright and then took them back, saying you'd spoken in confidence and she shouldn't say anything."

"She said exactly what she needed to say to have you suspecting I regretted our marriage."

"Yes. That you felt tricked, that maybe I'd gotten you drunk on purpose."

"Holy fuck!" I say, bolting to my feet.

Garrett turns at the window, and I see Sadie lying there, and I want her to be alive. Alive and well so I can confront her. So I can finally confront her and drive her from my life.

And I want to cry.

Mostly, I want to cry.

Kit says something to Jayla and Madison, who must have come running at my exclamation. I don't hear them. I just keep staring out the window at Sadie. After a moment, their footsteps retreat.

"I'm sorry," Kit says softly.

I half turn to him. "Why? You didn't do anything."

"I believed her," he says. "I shouldn't have, but she poked exactly the right spot. The place where I was vulnerable."

I sink onto the sofa.

He continues, "I regret that we'd been drinking when we went into that chapel, Laney. I regret it so damn much, and I have from the moment I came down from that high."

"You were drunk?" I say. "I didn't think—"

"No, I was fine. I mean the high of getting married. Of asking you to go into that chapel, and you saying yes, and then going through with it. Yes, we'd had a couple of drinks earlier, but I was sober."

"So was I." I meet his gaze. "I had two drinks two hours earlier. I could legally drive, and I could legally get married. I knew what I was doing, Kit. If you thought otherwise, at any time, you should have told me."

"I know. I thought of that, many times, but…" Now his gaze locks with mine. "If you did feel as if you'd agreed under the influence, would you have said so? Or would you have committed yourself to making the marriage work, because you care about me and you liked me enough to give it a shot."

I open my mouth. Then I shut it.

His lips twist in a wry smile. "Yep. Which is why I didn't ask. I knew if you were unhappy, you'd leave, and you might not have loved me yet, but I'd get there, and if I couldn't, then I'd let you go. I saw it as a chance to prove myself to the girl I've loved for most of my life."

My breath catches, and my eyes fill.

"Never said that, have I?" he says. "Never admitted it. Partly because it sounds corny, but mostly because, if you weren't happy with me, I didn't want to give you any more reason to feel guilty. You're too good at that already."

I want to say something—to say so much—but once again, words fail.

He continues, "I never thought you were drunk when you married me. I wouldn't have done that. But a bit tipsy? Maybe not making fully rational decisions? Yes. Afterward, I wondered about that. If so, I just had to convince you that marrying me was the best poor decision you'd ever made. Then along came the pandemic, and you weren't only stuck married to me—you were literally stuck with me, twenty-four hours a day, just the two of us. Any time things got understandably rocky, I worried more that I really had trapped you. Then Sadie said that, at a moment when I was already at my lowest… and she knew it."

He takes a deep breath. "She didn't say it out of the blue. She was asking how we were doing, and I was joking-not-joking about driving you crazy, me working from home while you were struggling with virtual teaching. I started blathering about how it had to be hard for you, coming back from Vegas with a husband instead of a hangover, ha-ha. I asked if you two had been in touch…"

"You wanted reassurance," I say. "You wanted her to say she'd talked to me, and I was happy and regretted nothing."

He nods. "Now, knowing how bad things were between you two, I feel stupid for expecting that from her. I set my own trap. After that conversation, I panicked and walked out, and I thought it was temporary. You'd come after me, and tell me you were madly in love with me, and everything would be fine." Another twisted smile. "Speaking of corny…"

"I was madly in love with you, Kit," I say. "I wanted to go after you. But you know what? You weren't the only one who worried their spouse might have stumbled into a marriage they didn't really want. When you left, that seemed to prove it."

His shoulders sag. "We made a mess of things, didn't we?"

"We made a royally fucked-up mess of things," I say. "But that's what happens when people like us go to Vegas as friends, wind up in bed, and get married after a couple of drinks. We are going to second-guess and overanalyze. Yes, someone might say a simple conversation could have cleared this up, but I don't think it would have. We set the stage for our own destruction."

"Not destruction," he says. "That was never my plan. Even though you didn't come after me, I wasn't done. Hell, when I signed the divorce papers, I wasn't done. It was a step in the new plan. We made a mistake. Time to undo it and start over. I'd win you back after you were free and clear. But then Anna died and you got custody of Madison… and if I tried wooing you then, I'd have worried I was striking while you were weak, like Sadie did with me. I needed to bide my time, and then launch a fresh seduction with something like coming to the island to help you solve the case of the staged curse hexes."

"That's working very well," I say with a straight face. "It's been terribly romantic so far."

He sputters a laugh.

I sober. "I'm sorry you were dragged into this."

"I'm not." He holds my gaze. "Whatever happens, there will never be one moment where I wish I hadn't come. Where I would have rather you faced this on your own."

"On her own?" Madison says behind us. "Hey, watch it, Kit. She has me."

Madison walks in, followed by Jayla.

"For the record," Jayla says, "I am definitely wondering why the hell I agreed to come along. Love you, girl, but the next time you want an excuse to mend a rift with me, let's fly to a beach somewhere, okay?"

"There's a beach here," Kit says. "Also, you're the one who asked to come along to mend that rift."

"No, I wanted to make sure you didn't do anything stupid."

"Mmm, no, pretty sure you said you wanted to talk to—"

"Enough." Jayla waves her hand. "The kid and I are sorry to interrupt your moment, but the light in the fridge is flickering. Are we in danger of losing our electricity? I don't know how this solar shit works."

"That's just the fridge," I say. "It does that. The storm means the system didn't recharge much, but we have a huge bank of batteries. I checked a couple of hours ago. We're at seventy percent."

"Whew. Okay, then, so—" Jayla turns to the window. "And it looks like Sadie is regaining consciousness. Let's hope Garrett got those meds into her, and she's not strung out on a fever."

Garrett is leaning over Sadie, who has lifted her head. She's on her back and trying to prop herself up on her arms. He takes hold of her shoulders, obviously telling her to lie down and rest.

From here, she looks fine. There's a bandage wrapped around her head to keep her cheek in place, but that's facing the other way, so all we see is the clean bandage. Above it, her eye is fixed on Garrett and her chin bobs, listening to what he's saying.

She starts falling back onto the deck, and he gets his hand in behind her head to lower it down.

He's a good brother.That's what Madison said, and it's absolutely true. Garrett isn't a monster. I never mistook him for one. People are never that simple. He did a monstrous thing to me, and I do not for one second believe I am the only person who has ever suffered at his hands. But he loves his little sister as much as Jayla loves her little brother, as much as Anna loved me.

Garrett protects Sadie and takes care of her, and right now, I am seeing the best of him, and I'm glad Madison is seeing it, too. I do not want her to be fooled, but she's too smart for that. I just want her to realize that her father—the person who contributed half her DNA—is more than what she's seen so far. She needs that.

Sadie is on her back again. Garrett bends over her, talking and smoothing her hair. Then she convulses, her back arching so fast her body strikes his, sending him toppling.

We all scramble to the door. My instinct is to block Madison's view, but she stays on Jayla's other side, thwarting me and Kit—intentionally.

Do not try to shield her. Protect her, yes. But don't shield her.

"She's having a seizure," Madison says.

Sadie's body jerks and spasms, every muscle tightening and contracting. Her heads slams into the deck before Garrett can get his hand behind it to cushion her.

"Watch her tongue," Jayla says. "Tell him to hold down her—"

"No!" Madison cuts in. "They don't do that now. A friend of mine has epilepsy. You're supposed to just let it run its course while making sure she doesn't get hurt."

Garrett has his hand behind Sadie's head, and his gaze swings up. When he sees us, his face contorts in rage and he jabs a finger at the door.

"I need to get her inside," he shouts. "Open the fucking door!"

Nobody moves. I meet Kit's eyes.

"No," Jayla says, too low for Garrett to overhear. "I'm sorry, but no."

"Jayla's right," Madison says. "The seizure isn't dangerous. It looks awful, but Sadie's okay."

I move to the window. "Just keep her from hitting her head. She'll be fine. We'll—"

"Fine? Fine? Does she look fucking fine?" Garrett meets my eyes. "You think there are monsters out here, Laney? No. The monsters are in there."

My heart twists, but even as Jayla strides forward to take over, I say, "You told me to look after our daughter. I will give you whatever you need to help Sadie, but you are not bringing her in here."

Sadie convulses, her body rocking up, head and feet barely touching the ground. Garrett tries to pull her down.

"No!" Madison shouts as she rushes to the door. "Don't try to stop the seizure! You'll hurt her!"

Garrett either doesn't hear her or doesn't care. He's pinning Sadie by the shoulders as her entire body jerks and heaves, limbs flailing.

Then she stops.

Sadie lies there for a moment, her chest heaving as if she's panting.

"She's breathing," Madison says. She's over at the door, and I open my mouth to tell her to get back, but she only presses her fingertips against the glass. "She's definitely breathing."

Madison's relief is palpable, and it brings tears to my eyes.

"She is," I say. "She's still—"

Sadie levers up. She hovers there, sitting upright. Garrett reaches for her, and she collapses against his shoulder.

"She's okay," Madison whispers. "She's—"

Sadie's head whips up, and Garrett screams. He falls back, hand to his shoulder, blood pumping between his fingers. A chunk of flesh hangs from Sadie's mouth. She spits it out and lunges for him with a banshee shriek.