Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The sun was rising by the time I managed to sneak out of the house.

Lee lay facedown on the sofa in the parlor. The fireplace hearth was scattered with cigarette butts, and liquor bottles left rings all over the original hardwood floors. My brother’s idea of a quiet night in.

Outside, the morning was crisp and calm, silent aside from the gentle lap of the waves and the crunch of my shoes on the gravel driveway. I picked up my pace, jogging past Lee’s mud-spattered pickup truck to follow the path I knew Heath had taken in the dark.

My childhood home is in a far-flung Chicago suburb closer to the Wisconsin border than to the city, dubbed The Heights due to its very slight elevation over the pancake-flat landscape surrounding it. Most of the area was populated in the late 1800s, following the fires and labor riots that sent all the richest assholes fleeing downtown Chicago for the relative safety of Lake Michigan’s northern shore. The Shaws had already been there for decades.

My some-number-of-greats-grandfather bought a big patch of lakefront property back when the area was nothing but dirt and sand and black oaks bent double by the winds that whipped across the water. A generation after him, another Shaw built a house right on the lakefront, leaving plenty of forest to block the view of future prying neighbors.

The house itself is relatively simple: a modest flagstone farmhouse with a few Gothic revival flourishes. It’s the land that’s valuable. Every decade or so, developers come sniffing around, offering stacks of cash, and whichever Shaw is currently in residence tells them to fuck off, sometimes with Midwestern passive-aggression, other times with the barrel of a shotgun.

You can see how I came by my winning personality.

As a girl, I hated that house. It had already fallen into cobweb-choked disrepair when my parents inherited it, and my mother passed away before she had a chance to carry out her grand redecoration plans. If I wasn’t at school or at the rink, I was usually running wild outdoors—on my own at first, and then with Heath by my side. In warmer months, the lake itself was our favorite spot. We’d wade through the waves, climb on top of the rocks to watch the sailboats and freighters passing by, and build bonfires in the small strip of sand that passed for a private beach.

When the weather turned, we retreated to the stable. Everyone still referred to the building that way, though it hadn’t held any horses since decades before my father was born. Made of the same gray stone as the house, it sat near our northern boundary line, right next to the family burial plot. Lee steered clear of that corner of the property; he never came to visit our parents’ graves, not even on their birthdays or the anniversaries of their deaths.

So when Lee banned Heath from the house barely an hour after our father’s funeral, it seemed like the ideal hiding spot. For weeks, I smuggled things out to him: candles, firewood, an old mattress I dragged up from the cellar, even a battery-operated boom box.

As soon as I entered the stable that morning, I could tell Heath hadn’t gotten any more rest than I had. He’d pulled the mattress into the warmest stall, away from the shattered skylight that served as a makeshift chimney, and a Debussy nocturne played on the classical radio station he tuned in to when he had trouble sleeping. Last night’s fire had burned down to ash, and though sunshine had begun to melt the frost crystals on the jagged remains of the glass, it was still so cold I could see my breath.

I’d brought him his warmest coat, which I draped over his shoulders before lying down beside him. He opened his eyes, and even in the dim light, I could see how bruised the right one was, a purple bloom unfurling between his lashes and cheekbone.

My fingertips ghosted over the swollen skin. It must have been tender, but Heath exhaled a cloud of steam and leaned into my touch.

“I’m going to kill Lee,” I said.

“It’s not that bad.” Heath’s teeth chattered when he spoke. I slipped off my shoes and rubbed my wool socks against his cold-numbed toes. “You can cover it up for Nationals, right?”

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure the watery drugstore concealer in my makeup kit was up to the task.

“I think freezing my ass off out here might’ve kept the swelling down.” He brushed my hair back, fingers catching in a tangle. “I’m just glad he didn’t hurt you.”

Lee had figured out a long time ago: the best way to hurt me was to hurt Heath.

Heath always stayed stoic, brushing off every insult and injury, no matter how severe. Once Lee shoved him into a wall so hard, he lost consciousness for a few terrifying seconds, and when I shook him back awake, all he did was shrug and tell me it could’ve been worse.

As close as we were, I knew next to nothing about Heath’s life before me. He had a birth certificate showing he was born in Michigan and shared his surname with his mother. The line that should’ve listed his father was blank. The name Rocha was Spanish in origin, or maybe Portuguese—the only solid clue he had to his heritage. Most people in the Midwest took one look at Heath’s brown skin and dark hair and assumed he was either Mexican or Middle Eastern (then made other, less charitable assumptions accordingly).

Heath knew nothing more about his real parents and insisted he had no desire to search for them. I’d never set foot inside his foster home, a squat sepia bungalow by the train tracks that didn’t look anywhere near large enough to hold the number of people who lived there at any given time. When Heath moved in with us the summer before eighth grade, my father gave him Lee’s childhood bedroom, which he’d vacated the second he turned eighteen in favor of a filthy shared flat closer to the city. Heath had gaped at the cramped, drafty room like it was a royal palace, and I’d realized it must have been the first time he’d had space all to himself.

He didn’t like to talk about his past, and I didn’t want to pry. All I knew was, if life with Lee Shaw was an improvement, whatever he’d endured before must have been truly horrific.

“Murdering your brother seems a little extreme.” Heath’s shivering had slowed, so the words came out steadier. “But I could get behind slashing his tires.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “Check your pockets.”

Heath rummaged through the coat until there was a metallic clink. A slow smile spread across his face as he held up the keys to Lee’s truck.

I didn’t have my driver’s license yet. But Heath had gotten his the summer before.

“Now he’s going to kill us, ” Heath said.

“Not if we’re gone before he wakes up.”

Still clutching the keys, Heath took my face in his hands and kissed me. Cold metal pressed against my cheek. “What did I tell you, Katarina Shaw?”

I smiled and kissed him back. “There’s nothing I can’t do.”