CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The world breaks everyone and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.

—Ernest Hemingway

Seventeen Years Ago

Patient Number 0022

Ambrose stepped from the car, shutting the door behind him and watching as the taxi did a three-point turn, the driver giving a salute as he drove by and then out of sight. Ambrose took a deep, sustaining breath and began walking in the direction of the farm, past the leaning mailbox, the empty pasture, and the split rail fence that was falling apart in more sections than it was holding together.

The place where his story had begun.

There was a lump in his throat, and he felt mildly clammy. Ambrose categorized all his body’s sensations as he moved toward the place of his nightmares. It looked even more dilapidated than it had in the memories his brain had conjured during Dr. Sweeton’s therapy. But of course, his mind hadn’t been able to see past what it’d looked like the last time he was here. Back then, the pasture hadn’t been overgrown with weeds taller than him.

Back then, his grandfather had been alive. Back then, he’d still been working this land, tending to the animals, making repairs, and performing maintenance. Apparently, his grandmother did none of that, nor did she hire anyone else to do it.

In a way, this slow walk was the culmination of the therapy he’d been through, or maybe the final test. He was here, at the scene of his real-life torment and the place that had haunted his nightmares ever since, and he was ... okay. He was okay. Sick. Sad. Nervous. Angry. But okay. And Ambrose DeMarce didn’t remember a day in his twenty-one years when he would have described himself as feeling okay. Especially standing here .

He stepped up on the porch, careful to avoid the sections of rotting wood. Something scurried underneath a hole in the boards, and Ambrose grimaced and stepped over the opening. He brought his fist to the door and banged.

There were the sounds of someone descending the squeaky inside stairs, and a moment later, the door was pulled open. His grandmother stood in front of him, staring blankly.

“Hi, Grandma.” Damn, she looked old. Old and slight. What was she now? Seventy-five? She looked like she was a hundred and twenty. Whatever glint of life had once shone from her eyes had been completely extinguished.

The broken old woman looked him up and down, assessing him as well, and then moved back and gave a jerk of her head, inviting him inside.

And honestly? He didn’t want to step a foot inside the place. But he did anyway, because he needed to test himself even further, and he wouldn’t be sure he’d fully passed until he’d moved beyond the threshold.

It was filthy. Dusty and dirty, with stuff everywhere. It’d never been anything but spick and span when his grandfather was alive. What was this? His grandmother’s final rebellion? A fuck-you to the tyrant who’d beaten her and then made her clean his floors until they shone?

And if it was, maybe he couldn’t blame her.

Even if this was no way to live.

But Ambrose was well acquainted with no way to live .

And deep down, he knew his grandmother was no rebel. She was too weak for that. Her body was still alive, but her spirit had curled up and died. He could practically smell the rot emanating through her dry, wrinkled skin. “Surprised to see you,” his grandmother said, huffing out a long-suffering sigh as she sank down into a wooden chair at the table in the middle of the room.

“I bet,” he said. Was she even more surprised that he was still alive? The cross still hung between the windows over the sink, the piece of dusty reed he remembered still draped over it. He’d read somewhere once that a crown of thorns and a reed had been given to Jesus to mock him before he was strung up on the cross. Ambrose’s gaze moved out the window next to that symbol of the rise above human cruelty, where he could see the edge of the shed in which he’d been tortured.

“I’m not here for a visit,” he told the old woman. “I’m here to let you know that there will be a lot of people on this farm in about an hour. The sheriff. A few dogs. A coroner.”

She showed no surprise, merely stared down at the ancient table, running her finger over a scratch in the wood.

“I doubt you’ll be surprised by what they find,” he said. A child. He wondered if they’d only find one.

His grandmother still showed no reaction, so Ambrose left the house and walked outside, drawing in a lungful of air and leaning against the porch railing.

Inside, he heard his grandmother climb back up the stairs, her footsteps heavy and slow.

Ambrose stared out at the scenery, and strangely, the first memory that popped into his head was of picking rhubarb and later dipping it in a bowl of white sugar. Even now, his mouth puckered at the recollection of the sweet and the sour.

The steeple of a church could be seen in the valley below, and Ambrose remembered going there on a field trip with his class. He recalled the way the stained glass windows had glittered in the sunshine, tossing rainbows on his skin. He’d expected to be overwhelmed by horrific memories here, and he was shocked that now that he remembered the entirety of his story, he was able to see all the threads it’d been woven with.

He leaned his face back and felt the warmth of the April sun, even while a chilly breeze ruffled his hair.

“I’m here, you old bastard,” he said. “I’m here, and I’m alive, and everyone is going to know your secret. Your secret will be your legacy, but it won’t be mine.”

The sheriff arrived forty-five minutes later, the canines a few minutes after that. He’d met the sheriff the day before. He’d sat in his office and told him about the memories of Milo that had just surfaced in his therapy sessions, the memories from when he was a little boy. The man had been kind. Understanding. He’d called Milo’s family, and they’d shown up. And miraculously, they’d thanked Ambrose for coming forward.

And now, Ambrose sat there as they worked, walking the property with the dogs, stopping here and there, and finally beginning to dig out near an aspen grove at the edge of the property. Ambrose had asked to help, but the sheriff had kindly told him no. This was a potential crime scene, and they had to make sure they didn’t miss or disrupt anything.

As it turned out, there was only one grave. The diggers hit upon a wooden box holding Milo’s body a few hours later and carefully transferred it to a white body bag. Ambrose hung his head and closed his eyes as they placed Milo’s small bones in an ambulance and rounded the corner, out of sight. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

He agreed to meet with the sheriff the next morning, and then he watched all the cars drive in a line down the dirt road, heading back into town, where they’d give Milo’s parents the news that their son’s body had been found. He didn’t imagine it would make it much easier, but at least now they’d have a place where they could visit him.

A mass was gathering in his throat, all the emotion that he hadn’t yet expressed for the little boy who had been his friend. His only friend. Ambrose pulled the screen door open harshly, and it banged against the side of the house with a loud clatter. He pushed at it again when it bounced back toward him, and he entered the house for the final time.

She was there, sitting at that old table again, a cup of coffee in front of her, her finger trailing over that deep, deep scratch. He vacantly wondered what had made that deep scratch, something sharp and heavy that had dug into the soft wood and left a gaping scar. His grandmother seemed obsessed with it but had paid no mind to the wide-open wounds in the people around her. Or even her own. But he’d been small like Milo too. Completely defenseless.

And suddenly, rage like a tidal wave overtook him, and he grabbed on to the doorframe to keep himself from flying at her, from taking her scrawny neck between his palms and squeezing. A moan escaped his lips, fingers tightening on the jamb. I’m not like him. I’m not like him. No, he wasn’t like his grandfather, not in any way. And he never would be. “You never did a goddamn thing to help me, you worthless piece of shit,” he spat out, his words laced with all the anger and grief and hopelessness he’d carried inside him since he was a tiny boy. “You could have called someone. You could have taken me and left.”

“You’re right,” she whispered. Her voice sounded like unused sandpaper, both abrasive and thin. But her eyes remained glued to the table as she began murmuring under her breath. Prayers. She was whispering prayers.

And he remembered then. “You used to sit outside the door to the shed and say prayers,” he said, tears gathering in his eyes. “I heard you. Sometimes I even called to you. But you never came in and rescued me.” She’d prayed outside a door when she possessed the key. And maybe Ambrose didn’t need to know more than that to understand the woman sitting in front of him.

But it still hurt. The pain inside was agony. It was the pain of the little boy he’d once been, but that little boy was part of Ambrose. And so Ambrose suffered too. He felt small again—unlovable—even though he recognized that his grandmother was only the cracked shell of a woman.

His grandmother began rocking in her seat. Back, forth, back, forth. The last of Ambrose’s anger drained, but so did the grief, leaving him with an empty feeling of sadness. But he knew now that he could fill that space with things of his choosing. Not alcohol or drugs, or other types of poison. So, no, this was a sadness that served. A sadness worth holding on to. For now, anyway.

Yes, his grandmother was a husk. He watched her there, rocking herself to and fro, gaze zoned out. Her mother or father had done something terrible to her, and then she’d found a husband who was familiar. She’d checked out long ago. She was an old woman now, and he could only feel sorry for her. There was no Dr. Sweeton to help. But she had this farm, and her abuser was gone. Maybe she could at least let some of the fear go.

“Goodbye, Grandma. I won’t be back.” And then he turned and walked out of the house he’d never been welcome in, for the final time.

He vowed that the cycle stopped with him. He was going to do his best to heal and to do some good with his life. Because he owed that much to Dr. Sweeton, and he owed that much to Milo Taft too. Because Ambrose had run when he could have ... what? Attacked? Yelled? Tried harder. Even if Milo had already been dead, it might not have killed the final piece of Ambrose’s soul if he had tried harder in some way. Even now, he didn’t know what that was. But how could he forgive himself when Milo was dead and he’d stuffed the memory of his murder so far down in his subconscious that his family had suffered for so many years?

And maybe if he had figured out a way to fight for Milo, his grandfather would have killed him too. But he would never know, because he hadn’t ... and he’d have to live with that now and forever. But living with it was better than trying to stuff it away and cover it up with drugs, frankly, as unexpectedly true as that was. And so he’d live a doubly good life—making up for the void of Milo Taft.

Ambrose walked back along the road, opening his phone and calling for a cab once he’d made it to the leaning mailbox that spelled out his family name.

There would be no more DeMarces—they would die out with him, and that seemed right and the greatest justice he could bring down upon a twisted bloodline. He would never have children, ones that might very well look like his grandfather. What a thing to live with. He couldn’t begin to imagine how awful that would be. The small face of his grandfather staring at him for the rest of his days. And perhaps that was irrational—hell, on some level, he knew it was—but it still felt right. Forget the genetics: What kind of father would he be, anyway? The only male figure in his life had savagely abused and tortured him. He wouldn’t have any idea what to do with a tender child. He refused to put another ruined person into this already broken world.

Ambrose put his hands in his pockets and waited for his ride. He’d come full circle. This was the beginning of his story, and in a way, it was its end, even though he intended to go on to live a full life. He’d been destroyed here, and he’d come back to stand before it and claim victory. But it wasn’t a singular moment of victory. It was a victory that had to be earned, a day at a time. And he intended to do just that.