Burn Our Bodies Down(74)

I nearly laugh. I’m just like her, aren’t I? As long as it’s only Nielsens, it’s fine. But as soon as it touches someone else, it’s gone too far.

There is so much I still don’t understand. But before I get answers, I have to get Tess. The first name on Gram’s list of loose ends, and I know what that means now.





twenty-seven





the lights are on at the Miller house. It’s closer than Fairhaven, but I can still only see the shape of it, the windows bright against the evening. I set off, at as close to a run as I can manage, bare feet aching against the earth.

I shouldn’t have left her. I went to talk to Mom and she wasn’t even there, and I left Tess alone, alone with her parents and with Gram. But I won’t make that mistake again. I’ll get her and we’ll go to Connors. We’ll sit in that station until the sun comes up, talk to the people we should’ve talked to from the start, and then, I hope, get the hell out of here.

I run up onto the porch and lean on the doorbell, knock and knock and call for Tess, for her parents. I don’t care if they’re in the middle of a fight. But the lights stay on, and the door stays shut, and I can’t see in through the tastefully frosted windows on either side of the entryway.

Gram came from here. I watched her truck come up the road from this house, back at Fairhaven. If she’s been here already, with that list of loose ends in her head…

I take a steadying breath and gingerly try the doorknob. It turns. The door eases open. It’s strange to not hear Mrs. Miller immediately welcoming me in, polite to the point of frantic. It’s strange to be here at all without Tess. Too quiet, too calm. Please, don’t let it have happened. Don’t let me be too late.

“Hello?” I call. “Sorry for barging in. The door was open, so I…”

Nobody scolds me. Nobody comes running. And it takes only a minute to see why. Because there’s blood on the white floor, and blood on the white walls, and blood on the white flowers in their white vase, where they sit on a little white end table.

A numbness spreading from my chest, swallowing me whole.

I see Mrs. Miller first. Laid out in the entrance to the kitchen, on her stomach. A shotgun blast through her nice dress, one heel stranded behind her, the other only halfway on her left foot. Her left hand is reaching out, her phone faceup on the floor.

Gram. Coming back to Fairhaven, washing and washing her hands. The dark patterns on her dress. A shotgun in the back of her pickup. It was already done. I left the fundraiser and went after Mom, and Gram did this. I let it happen.

“Tess?” I call. Please answer. Please.

The quiet keeps on. Cottony, thick, and I have to push myself through it. Past Mrs. Miller, past the stare of her open eyes. Through the smaller family room and down the hallway, following the footprints along the hardwood floor. Gram’s footprints, in Mrs. Miller’s blood.

I came this way that first day here, looking for Mr. Miller. It’s the same now, only it isn’t at all. Why would Gram do this? None of this had to happen. Not a single moment.

I should never have come here. To Phalene, to Fairhaven. I should have turned around the second Tess saw me. Or stayed out in that fire and died there, next to my own body.

The trail leads me past the bathroom, where a pile of white towels is crumpled in the sink, stained pink and red. Gram must’ve cleaned herself up some before coming back.

Farther then, to Mr. Miller’s study, and I stop. Count the footprints as they lead inside and then back out. Something is in there.

I think I know what.

The door is ajar, showing me Mr. Miller’s desk and his computer, the screen dark. Slowly, slowly, I open it a little more. File cabinets against the back wall, a thick geometric rug covering the floor. My stomach turns over as I step in. This is worse. Worse than Mrs. Miller, worse than waking up in my own grave. Worse than all of it.

“Tess?” I say. Keep my eyes fixed straight ahead. Don’t look to my left, where two slatted closet doors are thrown open. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

Except I have to. I take a deep breath, and it writhes in my throat, like my insides are trying to force it back out. Tess saw you, I tell myself. She saw all of you. You owe it to her to see this.

I turn. Catch a sob between my teeth, feel it split me in two. Mr. Miller is slumped on his knees, crammed in against the corner of his closet. The bullet’s torn through him so I can see chips of bone in the blood staining the floor. If I hadn’t seen what I’ve seen today, I’d lose the will to stay standing.

It’s not just him, though. Peeking out from behind him, the hem of Tess’s seersucker dress. The pale stretch of her leg. He’s wrapped around her, and those are her arms around his neck, her hands loose and limp against his shirt.

Dead. Both of them dead. One blast for two bodies.

At least, I think, they were together, and that’s when I start to cry.

Tess. Tess, who needed my help, who gave me hers so freely just because she could. It should be her standing here, her standing in the apricot grove saying goodbye before leaving me behind.

How could Gram do this? How could she come here and turn this place to ruin? Lives, people, real things in a real world and Gram took them in her hands like they were game pieces on a board. Tossed them aside.

“I’m sorry,” I tell them both. It’s not enough. It will never be enough. I can never give them the time they deserved.