A Flicker in the Dark(106)

I think about Daniel, those articles tucked inside a book in his bedroom. Cooper’s crimes the inspiration he had needed to get Sophie out—to make her disappear. So many lives were taken because of my brother; that fact still makes me lie awake at night, their faces burned into my mind like the soot on Lena’s palm. A big, black spot.

So many lives, gone. Except for Sophie Briggs. Her life was saved.

“I’m glad you did.” I smile. “And now we do.”

“I heard your dad’s getting out.” She takes a step forward, like she doesn’t quite want me to leave. I nod, not really sure how to respond.

I was right about Daniel visiting my father in Angola; that was where he had been going during all those trips. He had been trying to get to the truth about Cooper. When he told him about the killings happening again—the girls going missing, offering Aubrey’s necklace as proof—my father had agreed to come clean. But when you’ve already pled guilty to murder, you can’t just change your mind. You need something more; you need a confession. And that’s where I came in.

After all, it was my words that had put my father behind bars; it seemed only fitting that my conversation with Cooper, twenty years later, would be the one to free him.

I had watched my father apologize on the news last week. Apologize for lying, for protecting his son. For the additional lives that were lost because of it. I couldn’t bring myself to see him in person, not yet, but I remember staring at him through the TV screen, just like before. Only this time, I was trying to reconcile his new face with the one I still saw in my mind. His thick-rimmed glasses had been replaced with wire ones, simple and thin. There was a scar on his nose from when the original ones broke, cracking as his head slammed into the cruiser, a line of blood trickling down his cheek. His hair was shorter, his face rougher, almost as if it had been buffed with sandpaper or rubbed against the concrete until it scarred. I noticed pockmarks on his arms—burns, maybe—the skin stretched and shiny, perfectly circular like the tip of a cigarette butt.

But despite it all, it was him. It was my father. Alive.

“What are you going to do?” Sophie asks.

“I’m not really sure,” I say. And that’s the truth. I’m not sure.

Some days, I’m still so angry. My father lied. He took the blame for Cooper’s crimes. He found that box of jewelry and tucked it away, keeping his secret. Trading his freedom for Cooper’s life. And because of it, two more girls are dead. But on other days, I get it. I understand. Because that’s what parents do: They protect their children, no matter the cost. I think of all those mothers staring into the camera, the fathers melting into puddles by their sides. They had a child who was taken by the darkness—but what if your child was the darkness? Wouldn’t you want to protect them, too? It’s all about control, after all. The illusion that death is something we can contain, cupping it into our palms and holding it tight, never letting it escape. That Cooper, given another chance, could somehow change. That Lena, dangling herself in front of my brother, feeling the fire singe her skin, could pull away at just the right moment. Walk away unscathed.

But it’s just a lie we tell ourselves. Cooper never changed. Lena couldn’t outrun the flames. Even Daniel had tried it, attempting to control the anger that was inherent inside of him. Desperate to push down those little glimpses of his father that would peek through in his weakest moments. I’m guilty of it, too. All those little bottles in my desk drawer, calling to me like a whisper in the night.

It wasn’t until I found myself hovering over Cooper in my kitchen, looking down at his weakened body, that I had a taste of what it really felt like: control. Of not only having it, but taking it from somebody else. Snatching it up and claiming it as your own. And for one single moment, like a flicker in the dark, it felt good.

I smile at Sophie before turning around again, walking down the last few steps, feeling my shoes hit the pavement. I make my way toward my car, hands in my pockets, watching as dusk smears the horizon with pinks and yellows and oranges—one last moment of color before the darkness settles in again, the way it always does. And that’s when I notice it: the air around me buzzing with that familiar electrical charge. I stop, stand completely still, watching. Waiting. And then I cup my hands and grab at the sky, feeling a slight fluttering in my palms as I squeeze them shut. I stare down into my clenched fingers, at the thing I have trapped inside. At the life, quite literally, that rests in my hands. Then I bring it up to my face, peering through the tiny hole between my fingers.

Inside, a single firefly glows bright, its body pulsing with life. I stare at it for a while, my forehead pressed against my clenched fingers. I watch it radiate up close, flickering in my grasp, thinking of Lena.

Then I open my hands and set her free.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS




None of this would have been possible without my agent, Dan Conaway. You believed in this book before anyone else, signed me after reading only three chapters, and have graciously answered all of my frantic questions every day since. You took a chance on me and it changed my life. Thank you will never seem like enough.

To everyone at Writers House, you’ve been a dream. To Lauren Carsley, thank you for picking my book out of what was, I’m sure, a very large stack. To Peggy Boulos-Smith, Maja Nikolic, and Jessica Berger in the rights department, thank you for championing this story overseas.