Ned took the measure of me. I remember that. He stopped, took my “Don’t go” seriously. Maybe because I hadn’t said it before. It wasn’t premonition. It was common sense.

“I have to,” he said.

Have to? But I thought I knew what he meant from the quaver I’d seen. That feeling inside that if you don’t escape, even for a little while, you’ll start screaming and you won’t stop. That there has to be something better, so you try to get somewhere better. Even if it won’t last.

I relented, or gave in, nodded, and said, “Okay, but you’ll tell me what you find when you get back? Wake me up. Promise?”

Ned smiled in the way that felt like a hug. “Yeah, I’ll tell you.” But he never would.

When I told someone Ned’s story, like my husband, or parts blurted out of me drunk at bars … I knew it came out drenched in sentiment, lingered on some rough edges while sanding off others. But it was my story, and it was true. Or one overlay of the truth, depending on the day, the month, or the things that you remember that swim up unbidden or that you try to dredge up, afraid you’re going to forget forever. And you become someone else again, and the story changes yet again.

The next morning, I woke up to the light, the storm over. I hadn’t slept at first, but then had slept like I was dead. I was worried. Ned wasn’t in his room. He wasn’t in the kitchen. My parents looked at me blankly when I asked if they’d seen him. Shot was dead drunk, asleep somewhere.

Ned wasn’t in the barn or the backyard. But when I went down to the creek behind the house, I found him. Lying there, curled up, on the sandy bank.

I remember all the air went out of me and I fell like a sack. I fell, and kept falling. But then I thought maybe he was still alive, and I got up and ran to his body.

He was soaked by the storm, face slack, one hand reaching out. Later, the autopsy would find water in his lungs.

Those blue eyes were open, but dull and staring off into the distance. I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t do anything. The grief was ripping through me, tearing me into pieces.

But even then, there by the creek, my first thought was Shot. That Shot had killed him.

Which is why, two years later, I murdered Shot.

PART 3

SALAMANDER

LIFEBOAT

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