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But he couldn’t help it. Not back then.

He had to wait. He had to see if his brother would come back.



* * *



—

SILAS HELD THE WHISKEY bottle’s neck between his teeth as he crossed three empty lanes to turn right onto the lake road. He could see the twinkle of a house’s lights far ahead. He couldn’t tell yet if it was his house or the Watersons’.

He thought about his kids, his home.

Lily.

He couldn’t believe Lily’s words in the kitchen. Not the falling-in-love-with-Gavin part, which had resulted in the whiskey and the late-night ride in the first place, but the part about his distance from her, his preference for the company of the dead. Silas had always loved Lily. Sure, back then he had loved Sarah too. He was seventeen, and his capacity for love was just developing; he was ignorant as of yet about the harm a wide breadth of love could cause. But in the decades that followed, Silas never once faltered in his love for his wife. It wasn’t that he chose someone gone over her, as she seemed to believe. It was that after Sarah died, followed immediately and even more devastatingly by his brother, all he could think about each time he looked at Lily was how much it would hurt when inevitably she, by either choice or design, also left. And slowly, his future grief corroded his present love like a cancer, until looking at her felt the same as losing her. So he stopped looking.

And then there was Ruth.

She was beautiful. There was no denying that. Not only because of the wide cut of her eyes and the naturally swollen heft to her bottom lip like something stung or freshly fed. Not only because of the length of her, the way each inch seemed to unfurl from the last, a runaway spool of silk. Not only—certainly not, although Silas couldn’t deny the appeal of it—because of her newness. He had noticed the way the bones of her feet barely spread with each step she took, like she was walking on prized organic produce. Like the world had not yet taught her skin how to keep her safe.

He wondered if he would ever stop being surprised by the resemblance; if he would ever see Ruth without the cellophane of Sarah’s ghost. He doubted it.

Even more, he wasn’t sure he wanted to try.

And then it hit him. The one bargaining chip he had yet to use.

“Phil, how about this?” he asked. His eyes burned, but this time it was from the wind. He hadn’t cried about his brother since he left the pond all those years before.

“What if you could see Sarah?”

A whip of wind pushed his back, and that was all he needed.





PEYOTE





I HAD ONE BRIEF moment of satisfaction watching Cal’s face when she saw me instead of her little lackey. She looked truly shocked, scared even. It was delicious. But then she spoke.

“Pey, you fucking idiot! What are you doing here? Where did you get that?”

“I know everything,” I said, swallowing back her response as I pulled the necklace safely out of reach and hung it around my neck. “There is no football team. They’re your dad’s soldiers. Your brothers, as you called them. And you want his key—his mark—so that you can brand yourself and escape to Heaven. Well, I have news for you, bucko. There’s no such—”

“Do you have any idea what you just did?” Cal stared at the spot where Trey had been, her voice a hoarse whisper.

I’d told her I knew everything, and she hadn’t even flinched. I was done trying to surprise her with my wit. Nothing mattered but what I needed.

“Give me my results,” I said. “Now.”

“I will! I was always going to. But you just destroyed your perfect alibi.”

“What are you talking about?”

Cal ran both hands through her hair, her eyes darting between me and the building.

“Fuck. Fuck! It’s too late now. I wanted to keep you out of this. I wanted to take Trey down with me. But you just saved his ass by sending him back down to the office, didn’t you? Fuck, that’s such a shame.”

Cal pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket, took my hand, and wrapped my fist tightly around it.

“There, there are your results. Now, get out of here.”

“Not so fast,” I said, the paper hot on my skin.

“Look,” Cal said as she heaved open a window with her shoulder. “If your sleuthing has given you such a Hardy Boy, come with me. Otherwise, go home, Pey. This isn’t your problem.”

And with a shriek of rust, she pulled herself from one darkness into the next.





MICKEY





“I DARE YOU TO go skinny-dipping,” Josh said.

Mickey almost choked. “Excuse me?”

“Nope,” Sean interjected. “That’s not happening.”

“Oh, grow up, Sean,” Ruth said as she reached for Mickey’s empty cup with a wink and walked back toward the minifridge.

“Being grown up has zero impact on whether or not I want to watch my sister skinny-dip. Always going to be a strong no.”

“Ew, watch?” Mickey yelped.

The drink Ruth went to replace had been her third, and Mickey could feel the alcohol blossom in her stomach, turning her veins into flowering vines that unfurled one after another until every inch of her glowed.

“I definitely don’t want anyone to watch.”