We break out of the woods, near the service entry to the building. I’m about to say that this looks like a good place to dump the body when a voice calls, “Stop!” I know who it is before I turn. Trey. At once he’s beside me. He doesn’t touch me, just stares at me long and hard. “What in the Sam Hill do you think you’re doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I say, not making eye contact. “We’re leaving the body near the Outfitters. So it can be found.”
He opens his mouth to speak, but he’s so furious that all he does is shake. Finally, he takes a breath and exhales slowly, and a Zenlike calm washes over him. “Kiandra. Didn’t we just … That’s a bad idea, and you know it.”
“Oh, and destroying your entire kingdom is a good idea?” I shoot back, putting the body down so roughly that my shirt gets caught on a branch and rips, exposing the strap of my lacy black bra. By the time I realize how stupid it is, I’ve already reached down and made myself more presentable. Like someone finding my dead body would think, Her bra is showing!
He sighs. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you the whole story,” he mutters, running his hands through his hair. “You’re stubborn.”
“Maybe you can, but I would never be able to live knowing my mistake caused pain for so many people. No way. Sorry,” I say, turning my back on him.
But I can feel his eyes staring through me. “I know what this is about,” he says. “Your momma. You think you got to go against everything she tells you, or else you’re afraid you’ll start forgiving her. Maybe she deserves to be forgiven.”
“Enough with worshipping my mom!” I shout, turning back to him. I want to strangle him. “It’s getting really old.”
He looks down at the ground. “About that … I spent a lot of time doing things I shouldn’t have. That’s why my shine is still strong. Your mom should’ve punished me but she let me go. She saved my hide. So call it pathetic if you will.” He shrugs. “I call it honor.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean to call you that.”
He motions me to follow him, and at first I don’t want to leave the body, but I suppose off on this path, not twenty yards from civilization, is a good a place as any. It’s not as if we can parade the body into the front lobby. I rub my hands on my jeans and walk after him, first toward the river, then around, toward the picnic benches outside the Outfitters. It’s busy here. People I’ve never seen before are milling about with serious faces. Some are walking out through the woods. Everyone seems hyperalert. Is this for me?
Trey says to me, very softly, “I know your momma hurt you. If you want to stay mad at her, it’s up to you. You ain’t got to do nothing for her if you don’t want to.”
I’m about to say thank you, to explain that, really, I know I should forgive her, but that I just need time. It’s like spending a decade loving the color blue, only to suddenly realize my favorite color is red—it doesn’t seem real or right to change so soon. But then I notice that he’s staring at something between the trees, something away from the river, toward the road. I follow his gaze and, among the police cars, see a very familiar gray Honda Civic, and that’s when the world stops for me. The first thing I think of is how I spilled chocolate ice cream, speckled with rainbow-colored bits, on the front seat not two hours after he picked the car up from the dealer, and how he laughed and wiped it up and said, “Nice job, Sprinkles.”
My dad.
Trey hitches a thumb toward the man sitting behind the steering wheel, knuckles white. “You can’t undo this decision, Kiandra,” Trey says. “So even if you don’t want to think on your momma, you might want to think on him.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
It’s like the world suddenly shifts, and all the brilliance of this new world fades to darker than the old. In seconds, the allure, the beauty of this place is gone.
I was deluding myself. I’d gotten so good at forcing him out of my mind during the rafting trip—too good. But it’s so easy to commit to something life-altering when you’re not in the presence of the person whose life you’re going to alter the most. And in a blur, every moment I’ve spent with him, no matter how trivial, flashes in front of my eyes, carrying weight it never did before. The same words echo in my ears: You’re my everything. You’re my everything. Suddenly I’m dizzy. Trey notices me losing my balance and props me up before I can slump to the ground, a defeated mass. Just like my father, who, behind the wheel of his Civic, looks so small and alone.
I turn to Vi, but words won’t come out. There’s a crushing, suffocating pain in my chest, like my heart is breaking into a thousand pieces. Finally, something comes, the only thing I can manage. “I’m sorry.”
My dad steps out of the car and he’s wearing his trademark wrinkled tweed blazer and L.L.Bean hiking boots. His hair is sticking up, which is a usual thing in the morning before he showers. He has a stack of flyers in his hands; I can see the word MISSING in bright red on top. There’s a picture underneath and I bet with everything I am that it’s the one of me last Christmas, wearing the Santa hat he always forced on me. I look about ten in the picture, which is why he loved it and put it on his desk at school. I’m sure that in the next half hour, half the trees in Forks will have that picture tacked to their trunks.
I turn to Trey. “What do you want me to do?” I ask, ignoring Vi’s expression. She begins to shake her head, first slowly, then building up momentum.
“We got to get that body in the boat,” Trey says. “We got to take it back.” When Trey reaches for the body, Vi moves to block his way. The way she stares at him, she looks seven feet tall.
I whisper to her, “I can’t leave my dad. I’m sorry. I have to go back.”
Her face, marred with dirt, doesn’t change. She crosses her arms in front of her ruffled dress, and despite the ruffles and lace, she looks fierce, like an ancient warrior. I’m surprised that with her strength and bravery, she could be so afraid of someone like her sister, Lannie. Suddenly I realize something. “That’s what you wanted,” I say to Vi, softly at first. “You become the thing that you wanted most in life. When she held you down in the mud, you wanted to be stronger than her. And you are.”
She just stares at me, her face stone.
“And don’t you see? She was in line to become Mistress. You’re her sister. You’re a member of our family. That means that you have the same powers we do. Right?” I turn to Trey. “We can fight her ourselves. Right?”
Trey laughs. “Whoa, cowboy. You ain’t fighting nobody. Not if you want to get home.”
“Okay, but she can, right? She’s more powerful than Lannie, so …”