Sign Here(67)

“Yes, Evan. I’m familiar with the concept of honesty. I can do that.”

Evan nodded, his eyes down. The crickets outside made a blanket of sound like we were being tucked in real tight.

“How did you know about me?”

Evan smiled, and I saw the way the wrinkles around his eyes worked. They weren’t there to tally time. They were there to give his face the necessary room to transform, to blossom.

“You are famous in our family,” he said. For someone who leaned on the “famous” line like crutches at the time, it reached my blood much too quickly.

“Well,” I said, shifting. “That’s—”

“My grandpa used to talk about you all of the time. How he outsmarted the devil.”

I coughed. “Excuse me?”

“He was a bit of an exaggerator. ‘For the sake of the story,’ he always said. Of course, he didn’t actually outsmart you, did he? You got him in the end.”

“I am not the devil.”

I was the only person Evan had ever met from Hell. So, in the way kids who grow up in Westchester say they’re from the city when they travel anywhere outside of New York, it was close enough. But it’s still an irritating generalization. On the scale of humanity, I was closer to him than to this supposed devil. Surely.

“Who are you, then?”

“I’m the answer to your problems.”

“Sounds like the devil to me.”

I laughed. “Fair enough.” I reached for the mug in front of me. “What’s your question for me?”

I could see the sleepless nights on his skin. The purple under his eyes, the tremor in his hand. He wasn’t here anymore, not fully. He was somewhere between reality and nightmares. Exhaustion coated him like oil on a baby duck.

“I need to know the truth. Before I sign myself over to you, I need to know for absolute certain what happened that night. Did—” Evan’s voice wavered. He coughed to cover it. “Did my son kill that girl?”

He was already in Hell. The murder, the police touching everything he owned with rough and thoughtless hands, the attention junkies who stood night after night on his front lawn, pictures of Sarah they’d pulled from the Internet and candles with drip protectors in each hand, sucking whatever particles were left of her from the air with open mouths.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry to have to say it, but yes, he did.”

Evan put his head in his hands.

“Jesus,” he said, his voice muffled. “Good God.”

“Just me, I’m afraid.”

I pulled out my briefcase and flipped through the pages inside and he signed again and again.

“Okay, Evan. Your deal is done. Your soul for Philip’s. We will not interfere with your life or your death—you will live and die as you would’ve anyway. Only after you die will the deal take effect.”

“Thank you.”

I have never forgotten that part. The sound of him thanking me.

I’ve wondered many times if I should’ve left it at that, and why I didn’t. According to the training manual, a sales associate should never disclose information that isn’t required to make the deal, and this deal was already made. Maybe I was looking out for him and what was left of his life. Or maybe I was simply wreaking havoc for havoc’s sake, due to the devil in me.

“Your deal is done; there is no undoing it,” I said as I stood up to leave. “But I think it’s important for you to know something.”

“Okay,” Evan responded, wary.

“You asked the wrong question,” I said, slipping my tablet back into its case. “What you should’ve asked was which son.”





PART III





LILY





THE NIGHT SARAH KELLY died went like this.

Lily came in from the lake just as the boys got back from the state liquor store. Being three and a half years older, Philip had an ID, but his bike couldn’t carry the supplies, so they took Evan’s old truck. Lily could hear it from the outdoor shower, where the loose door brought on memories of the afternoon before. Loose because Silas had picked her up and shoved her against it, his body following hers, their skin starving collectively and fed the same way.

Lily was no stranger to hunger.

“What did we get?” she asked when she walked into the kitchen, looping her arms around Silas’s waist from behind as he unloaded beers into the fridge. She loved the way he smelled, like laundry and body spray and just a hint of pot.

“?‘What didn’t we get?’ is more like it,” he said, reaching around to cup her ass in her shorts before she squealed and wriggled away.

“This is what you wanted, right?” Phil asked, holding out a bottle of Malibu as he hoisted a cardboard box full of liquor onto the kitchen counter.

“Phil, you’re my hero!”

She pitched up on her toes and kissed him quickly on the cheek. Lily was gleefully adjusting to her new role in the Harrison family. A few months ago, she never would’ve been brave enough to talk to Philip like that. But she was practically family now, she thought as she cradled her own personal bottle. And that made this house her domain.

“I’m going to hide that,” Madeline said, coming up behind her.