The Dead and the Dark(70)

“You probably hate me—”

“Correct.”

Ashley steeled herself. “—but I wanna help.”

“Then get my dad out of jail,” Logan said. She looked up. “That’s what you can do to help.”

“What do you think you’re gonna find?” Ashley asked. “It’s a grave.”

“Gus says they had a kid that died. They never told me about that.” Logan wiped her cheeks, leaving a streak of gray dirt behind.

Ashley swallowed and crouched beside Logan. “So you’re gonna dig up their body? What would that prove?”

Logan’s expression softened. She was afraid. Raindrops dotted her cheeks and speckled her scalp. Somewhere far behind them, thunder groaned.

“What if it’s exactly what it should be?” Ashley asked. “What if you’re just digging up a kid’s bones? There are better ways to figure this out. You could just ask Brandon.”

Logan shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Then you could visit Alejo and ask him,” Ashley said, swallowing the guilt welling in her chest.

“You don’t get to talk about him.”

Ashley nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“If you wanna help, you have to help me do this,” Logan whispered. She wiped her nose with the hem of her sleeve. “I … feel like I’m losing it. I don’t know what’s real. I don’t know if I’m remembering things right. I don’t know if I’m supposed to trust my dads or if they’ve been lying to me the whole time.”

Ashley touched Logan’s hand.

“What if there was never a second kid?” Logan said.

“What?”

“What if it’s…” Logan clutched the front of her jacket. “I told you about my dreams. When I’m being buried, it feels so real. It’s like at the cabin. There are all these things in Snakebite that I remember, but I shouldn’t. I’ve never been here before.”

“You think you’re connected to whatever’s buried here?” Ashley asked.

“I don’t know.”

Ashley stared into the mound of dirt.

“In my dreams, Brandon’s the one burying me.”

Ashley grimaced. Logan was right; it didn’t make sense that the Ortiz-Woodleys had a child they never mentioned. It didn’t make sense that this grave was down here with Snakebite’s unnamed ancestors and not up on the hill with the rest of the town. The more they unraveled Snakebite, the less sense it made. Fear grew in Ashley, warning her that if they unraveled too far, there would be no more Snakebite left.

Ashley swallowed. “Okay.”

She made her way back to the Ford and opened the tool chest in the trunk. She pulled out two worn shovels and returned to the grave. Logan took one of the shovels and pressed it against the mound of dirt.

“Are you sure about this?” Ashley asked.

“No.” Logan bit her lip. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

They went to work. There was a strange hum on the wind, low and quiet like at the cabin, but now it was everywhere. The earth in Pioneer Cemetery was drier than the soil on top of the hill. It was caked together and hardened like brick. The hillside echoed with roiling thunder and the clang of metal against stone, but slowly, they made progress. Eventually, a layer of the dusty earth fell away, revealing a small wooden box in the grave. It took a moment for the strange object to register—Ashley had expected to find bones or nothing at all. The box wasn’t big enough or buried deep enough to be a casket.

Logan didn’t hesitate. The rain graduated from droplets to thick splatters of warm water bursting over the grave, swirling the dirt into a paste. Logan plucked the wooden box from the grave and pulled open the lid. Inside was a folded piece of paper.

Logan looked at Ashley. Ashley looked back. A truck whirred past on the highway behind them and Ashley was suddenly reminded that there was a world beyond this moment. She held her hands over Logan’s piece of paper to protect it from the rain.

“There’s writing on it,” Logan said.

“Can you read it?”

Logan’s hands shook but she nodded. She brushed dirt from the paper, crumpling its edges in her grip. “It’s … to me.”

She scanned the paper again and again, and each time her tear-rimmed eyes widened. She exhaled and pressed her wrist to her eyes. The damp wind through the cemetery was colder than it had any right to be. Whatever was on the paper, it was unspooling Logan from the inside.

“I don’t get it…” she breathed.

Tenderly, she handed the paper to Ashley. The writing was brief, scrawled as if it’d been written quickly. It read:

Logan,

I tried everything. I tried to live quietly, but that was too loud. I tried to raise a family right, but I lost it. I tried to live without you, but I couldn’t. I tried to save you, but I lost myself. Maybe this was all a mistake and things won’t ever be the same.

I’m happy I got to see you again.

Love,

B



Ashley shook her head. She read it over again but the words swam without meaning. She turned the paper over but the other side was blank, dotted with bits of dirt and rain. There was nothing else in the box, nothing else in the grave, nothing else at all.