Collared(52)

I clasp the weeds. There are a few small white flowers bursting from the ends of some, a couple dandelions sticking out. I lower the bouquet to the stone and position it above his name. I notice Torrin turn around completely.

“But he wasn’t like that. He wasn’t,” I add when I hear him exhale sharply.

“What was he then?”

I don’t recognize his voice. I’ve never heard it like this before.

“Sad. Confused. Lost.” I pull my hand away and settle it back over my legs. “He kept me alive. He took care of me.”

“After kidnapping you,” he growls. The words seem to echo through the silent cemetery.

“He wasn’t a bad person. He was sick. He needed help . . . but he wasn’t the evil person everyone thinks he was.” I twist my neck just enough so I can see him but not so far I can’t see the gravestone.

“His medical records might read like an encyclopedia for mental illness, but he wasn’t sick enough to not realize that swallowing a bullet when his house was surrounded by cops was a better option than spending the rest of his life in jail.” He stops like he shouldn’t say anymore, but he does. “Not sick enough to not have the sense to stalk you, meticulously plan your abduction, and keep you hidden for ten years. If that isn’t evil, I must not know the definition.”

I reach over my shoulder, unfolding my hand toward him. “I’ve forgiven him. You should too.”

“I’ll never forgive him.” Even as he says this, he backs up and finds my hand with his.

Our backs stay to one another, but our hands connect us. The cold damp creeping up my legs vanishes. The stonelike heaviness crumbles.

“You’re a priest,” I say softly. “Aren’t you supposed to be all about the forgiveness thing?”

His fingers grip mine harder. Almost so hard it hurts. “Forgiveness is in God’s nature. Not man’s. Not mine.”

We’re quiet after that. We don’t move. Our hands stay connected, and he stays still, silent, letting the night wash over us.

I feel like it’s time to leave—that nothing else can be achieved here tonight—but as I start to rise, something Torrin said hits me. “How do you know that he planned it?”

When Torrin stays quiet, I twist around until I’m angled toward him. He doesn’t want to have this conversation. I can tell because his face is creased from the internal battle waging inside him.

He turns a little my way, his eyes shifting to our conjoined hands. “Because I’ve talked to the detectives working the case.”

The same detectives who’ve wanted to talk to me for days. The same ones I’ve spent days avoiding and coming up with excuses for why I couldn’t talk with them yet.

“Why did they want to talk with you?”

Torrin rolls his fingers in my hand—his knuckles pop. “Because I’m the one who ultimately led them to re-investigating Earl Rae Jackson.”

I feel my forehead crease. “Re-investigating? As in they investigated him before?”

Torrin’s head drops like he’s been balancing a boulder on his neck for years. “I made a list, right after you went missing, of all the people I could think of that you’d come in contact with. All of them.” His eyes narrow into the night. “Right down to the cashier at the gas station we used to buy our Slurpees from every day after school.”

The ground moves beneath me. My world shifts as I go back in time to a period when I’d never been happier. I travel back to the afternoons spent with Torrin when we’d stopped for giant Slurpees after school to fuel up for what we had planned for later—when we told our parents we were studying. I remember the sweetness of the blueberry flavor that was our favorite, remember the way it would freeze my stomach and brain at the same time. The way the foam cup felt rubbing against the pads of my fingers. How Torrin would smile at me when I tried to pay, and instead he slipped a couple dollar bills from his wallet to the cashier before I could. I remember . . . him.

When I inhale, I feel like I’ve been drowning. I suck at the air until I feel my lungs about to burst.

“Oh my god,” I breathe, doubling over because it hurts. Everything.

I never would have remembered Earl Rae’s face from the gas station—I could barely remember anything from that life—but now that I do, I know I’ll never forget it.

It’s one memory I wish I could purge.

“The cops talked with Earl Rae after you went missing, but since he didn’t have any priors and didn’t fit the damn profile, they didn’t take it any further.”

I sway in place. Torrin’s hand keeps me steady. “So how did they finally find him?” That voice isn’t mine. It doesn’t sound anything like mine.

For a second, Torrin leans away from me. Then he kneels beside me, but we’re still not facing each other. He’s aimed one way. I’m aimed the other.

“I remembered something a little while ago. Something he said to you one day after we paid for our Slurpee.” Torrin blinks into the darkness. His jawbone pops through his skin. “He said you looked just like his daughter.” He pauses to take a breath.

I feel like the breath was just pulled right out of my lungs.

“At the time, it didn’t seem like a big deal, and it wasn’t like I knew he’d lost his daughter, but for some reason, that night, I just knew it was him.” When he exhales, his breath fogs the air. It’s summer—it shouldn’t be cold enough to steam the air with a breath. “I called the cops, told them what I remembered, and that’s how they found you.”