I remember her laughing, holding me close, telling me I was wonderful, telling me that I was everything she had been waiting for.

I don’t remember anything after that.

Chapter 29

I jerked awake. My head pounded, and I thought I might vomit. At first I didn’t know where I was, and then I remembered. I was in the tenant house, still fully dressed, on a pallet on the floor, wrapped up tight with Cass.

Oh shit. Cass.

She rolled over and blinked her eyes at me, all sleepy and confused.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“I have to go,” I said, scrambling to my feet. “I’m sorry.”

I ran out of the tenant house and into the woods, still half drunk, the stars scattered and burning above me. I snuck in the house and down the hall, my head aching, my stomach starting to swirl. I was going to puke, I knew that. The house was so dark, so quiet, and I staggered up the stairs as silent as I could. The second-floor hallway was pitch black and lightless, every footfall of mine making the floorboards holler.

The bathroom wasn’t far, just a couple of doors down from our bedroom. I stepped inside, the room so dark it might have been a closet, and fumbled a moment with the light switch.

Finally I flicked it, and fluorescent light flooded the room.

A man in a gray suit stood in front of me. He was tall and old, strands of white hair swooped across his bald head. In his hand he held a knife.

I was so scared I couldn’t move, my scream caught in my throat. He stared at me, red-eyed and pleading, a tear spilling down his cheek.

“Are you certain?” he said. “Are you sure there’s no other way?”

I stood there dumbly, trying to find my words, trying to do anything other than gasp for air.

“Very well,” he said.

I thought he was going to kill me. I thought he was going to murder me in my grandmother’s bathroom. I held my hands up and staggered back against the door, trying to protect myself.

The man lifted the knife to his neck and slid it across his throat. Blood erupted from his neck like music, like all the words he had been too afraid to speak out loud, all the dreams and wishes and thoughts he’d stored up his whole life now finally set free.

I flung the door open and tripped into the hallway. When I looked back, the man was gone.

He was never there at all. It was a vision.

I crawled back into the bathroom and shut the door behind me and vomited, trying to be quiet about it, trying not to wake a soul. After a few minutes I guzzled water from the tap and stumbled to the bedroom. I shut the door and locked it.

“You okay?” mumbled Murphy.