The urge to yell rose up, hot and acidic. Sawyer, you idiot. I kept quiet instead. The cougar was just a baby, it wouldn’t kill anyone, and he’s just a kid. I made worse choices. Way worse. “It’s gonna be OK,” I said. “We’ll find it and solve it.”

Sawyer shoved his plate away and put his head on the table. He was motionless for a half minute, then his back trembled.

“Sawyer,” I said, rubbing his back. “You are such a good kid. You are a great kid. It’s only a mistake. We’ll go mend the fence, and it will be OK. I made way worse mistakes when I was your age.”

“I feel this disgust under my skin,” he said, his voice liquid and phlegmy. “I hate myself.”

“Sawyer. I was like that too. You change. You won’t always feel that. The things I did when I was younger, I would never ever do those things now.”

Sawyer lifted his head. His eyes were wet. I hadn’t seen him cry since he was six or seven. Jesus, ten years. Had I really not seen the kid cry in ten years? And when was the last time I’d embraced him?

“What did you do?” Sawyer said, curious, his voice childlike.

The shame I’d buried deep inside myself, so deep I’d forgotten it. That shame had been clawing its way out this past week, screaming so loud I couldn’t ignore it.

Maybe if I told him, he wouldn’t feel so bad about himself. Or maybe he’d never look at me the same.

“I hurt people,” I said. “The kind of hurt that leaves scars on the skin.”

Sawyer wiped his tears away. “Tell me.” There was sorrow and desperation in his eyes. The kid was struggling. Of course he was. His mom’s in prison, he’s in a new place, a small town, living with his stepmom and stepsister full-time for the first time ever.

I closed my eyes, covered my face with my hands, and talked. About finding Dawn’s body. About that morning, a month later, when my mom told me it had been Melinda Hornne who’d killed the girl I loved. Melinda, a witchy lady who’d had a litter of kids and drunken painting parties in her garage, had confessed. Mom told me the whole lot of them, the Hornnes, were Satan worshippers. When my mom worked in the church’s food pantry, Father Greg had told her all sorts of disgusting things about Melinda Hornne.

At school that next morning, when I saw that soft-bellied, dirty-haired devil-worshipper, Rodney, the kid who’d been flirting with Dawn at Marjory’s, I pictured Dawn’s swollen corpse and her glazed, cloudy eyes, and I fucking lost it.