Gun Shy(55)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE





CASSIE





If I thought watching Jennifer Thomas die was bad, it’s nothing compared to how I feel when we bury her in the yard.

Damon is sitting at the kitchen table where Ray can both dig and keep an eye on him at the same time, numbed into a semi-calm state by whatever pills Ray tipped into his mouth before he dragged me out here and handed me a shovel. We’ve been digging for what feels like hours in the spot under the huge chestnut tree that flanks the back of the house.

Jennifer’s body is wrapped in plastic sheeting. Her baby is inside the heart-shaped box. I have blisters all over my hands from digging.

Ray and I work silently, the smell of his cigarette smoke turning my already delicate stomach. I want to throw up every time I look at Jennifer, her bare feet sticking out of the sheeting like a bad joke.

We’re maybe four feet deep in black dirt when Ray stops and leans on his shovel, lighting a fresh cigarette off the butt of his old one. I think about asking for one, but I can’t speak.

“He hasn’t said a damn word,” Ray says, looking up into the house at Damon, still mute and staring into space.

“He’s in shock,” I reply.

“He needs to see a doctor.”

I made a sound at the back of my throat. “Jennifer needed to see a doctor.”

Something flashes in Ray’s eyes. I don’t even see his hand go to his hip; there’s just his hand on the back of my neck, and the cold barrel of a gun digging into my throat.

“You don’t ever talk to me like that, do you understand?”

I try to nod but it makes the gun barrel dig in harder.

“Do. You. Understand?” Ray repeats.

“Yes,” I whimper.

“Don’t give me a reason to put you in this hole and bury you alive, Cassie.”

“I won’t.”

He lets go of me and I put my free hand to my throat, massaging the spot where the gun was.

“My brother’s pretty shaken up by this.” No shit, asshole. I look at the shovel in my hand and wonder if I could bring it up and smash Ray’s temple in before he could get off a shot. Probably not. And if I try, and fail, I’ll be dead in this hole and under four feet of dirt before sunrise, with Jennifer and her baby as my eternal company.

“All right, this is deep enough,” Ray says, changing tact. He takes my shovel and his and throws them out of the hole. He motions for me to get out of the way and I do, hoisting myself back onto firm ground as he rolls Jennifer into the hole. He picks up the heart-shaped box next, making a move to toss it in, but I stop him at the last second.

“Let me,” I say quietly, taking the box from him. I slide down into the hole on my ass, the box in my hands, and place it as gently as possible in the middle of the plastic-wrapped lump that used to be Jennifer. I stand, and as I turn around Ray is sitting on the edge of this makeshift grave, the barrel of his gun just touching my forehead and did I just dig my own fucking grave?

“We already did this,” I say. “If you’re going to shoot me, just do it.”

Nobody says anything for a moment. I see his finger on the trigger, my eyes crossed and aching as I try to focus. I wonder if I’d feel the bullet rip through my skull and bed into my brain. Maybe for just a millisecond? Or would it be a loud noise and then: Lights out.

Finally, Ray laughs. “You are a stone cold bitch,” he remarks, lowering the gun and handing me a shovel.

I am so fucking grateful that I can’t see Jennifer’s face as I pile dirt on top of her until she disappears into the earth.





CHAPTER THIRTY





CASSIE





There are things you think you know about a person, about a place, about life.

And some of those things will remain true. But others are lies we tell ourselves, constructs designed to keep us safe.

But I’m not safe anymore.

I never really was.

I’m complacent. That’s the thing that has kept me here all these years, with Mom down the hall and Damon in my bed. Complacency is the drug I swallowed the night Leo went to prison. Complacency is the price I have paid for the illusion of my own survival.

Ray spends the rest of the night at our house, pinning me with his watchful eyes like a butterfly collector might pin dead butterflies to the wall, kept behind glass, frozen in flight.

When he leaves the next morning, I am surprised. Surprised that, in the end, he didn’t kill me. I know he wants to. For once, it seems, I can be grateful that Damon loves me to the brink of insanity. Ray tried to convince Damon that they’d be better off killing me, too, but Damon refused. What a lucky girl I am. What a good stepdaddy I have.

Ray leaves.

I am alone with Damon.

Finally, he tells me what happened in the attic with Jennifer Thomas.

Sitting at the same kitchen table where he watched us bury her, Damon tells me the truth. At least, his version of it.

“Jennifer was pregnant,” he says, looking anywhere but at me. His eyes are red.

“With your baby,” I add.

Damon nods.

I don’t even bother asking what a forty-year-old man is doing screwing a sixteen-year-old girl, let alone getting her pregnant. I’ve lived this life already. I was eighteen, not sixteen, but I take my birth control as religiously as a priest takes confession.