“The surgeon wanted a souvenir,” Dad said. I gave him a blank look, unable to process the humor. He cleared his throat. “It was damaged. They had to amputate.”
I hadn’t even noticed. “What about the rest of me?”
“I hope you didn’t have an emotional attachment to your spleen. And a sizable piece of intestine. You’re basically a soup of antibiotics and narcotics with a few chunks of meat to provide texture, but you’ll live.”
“That’s good,” I managed. I tried to wet my cracked lips, but my mouth was just as dried out. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I mean after. Did they—is Cody—”
“He’s been arrested,” Dad said. “Even these chuckleheads have managed to put two and two together. Plus you kept saying ‘Cody Benham shot me’ over and over again.”
“That part I don’t remember,” I confessed.
“Yeah, you were pretty loopy,” Dad said. He leaned forward and patted my good hand. “Anyway. Glad you’re not dead. You, ah. Should really stop getting hurt.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” I said. My eyelids were getting heavy.
“Naomi, I—”
I drifted. I dreamed of a gleaming snake slithering down my throat and a black-eyed woman biting down on my fingers, dull teeth grinding their way through my flesh.
I woke alone.
* * *
I had plenty of visitors. Bishop, Sawant, other cops. Dad. Even Marcus and Kimiko.
Ethan never came. I wasn’t sure if that was a disappointment or a relief.
There were loose ends to wrap up. I told my story countless times, and after the hundredth repetition or so I finally got some information in return. Marcus Barnes, as it turned out, had indeed been worried about my mental state when I left the house. Worried enough that he called around trying to find out where I was and make sure I wasn’t going to hurt myself. Bishop and Ethan were already on their way to the woods when I made the call—and a good thing, since Cody probably would have found me first, otherwise.
Cass hadn’t been lying about Cody threatening her, as it turned out. After years of her blackmail, he’d started recording their phone conversations. Including the one the day that Liv died, when she told him that he needed to come back to Chester and “deal with the situation.” Maybe she’d convinced herself there was another way it could end; maybe she’d known exactly what she was setting in motion. Either way, the result was the same. My two best friends were dead.
As news spread, other stories emerged. People she’d blackmailed came forward—or were forced to, as her life was turned inside out and evidence uncovered. Others, presumably, kept their silence and hoped their sins wouldn’t be unearthed along with hers. The Greens got a lawyer and didn’t speak to anyone. They had a small, private funeral for Cass. As strange as it was, I wished I could be there. I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye—to Cass, or to the person I’d thought she was. I couldn’t stop thinking about Amanda. She was living with her grandparents now. I’d taken her mother from her.
But then I remembered the timid way she watched the world and wondered what it had been like, to have a mother like Cassidy Green.
The day before I left the hospital, Bishop came by one more time to speak to me. They’d released Jessi Walker’s remains to her sister.
Persephone had made it out of the forest at last.
* * *
I was in the hospital for three weeks before I was well enough to be discharged, and by that time the life I’d had was gone for good.
Between the hospital bills and the fact that I couldn’t work, my savings dried up in the blink of an eye. This time around, no one was sending Get Well cards packed with cash. I couldn’t go back to weddings. I was the wrong kind of almost famous now.
So I did what Mitch had always told me to. I turned my pain into art, and I sold it. 17 opened at a gallery in Seattle the same week Cody took a plea deal, sparing me another trial. The synchronicity led to a flurry media interest, and before the show even opened I’d sold half the prints for more money than I’d ever thought possible.
Seventeen photographs, one for every scar, the broken pieces of me against the backdrop of the forest, the cracked asphalt behind the gas station, the rusted junkers in my father’s yard. Each one was like cutting myself open all over again. Each time, I healed a little cleaner.
I sent Mitch an invitation, a message scrawled on the corner. Dear Mitch: You were right, it turns out. So fuck you.
He showed up with a girl who cried when she talked to me. They were perfect together.
I wondered if Ethan would show, but he didn’t. I’d searched for his name sometimes, but he seemed to have vanished again, and I didn’t look too hard. After the gallery show I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, stripped down to my skin, and splayed my mutilated fingers under the whorl of scar tissue the bullet had left on my stomach on its way out of my body.
Eighteen, I thought. Nineteen.
But the numbers were a lie, like everything else. The cracks on my skin were too many to count.
* * *
Ten months after the second time I almost died, we were cleaning the house again. It was a lurching process, steps forward followed by frantic backsliding, but Dad was still trying.
The sun beat down, a rare day without a cloud in the sky. I tossed the trash bag I was carrying onto the pile by the front steps and peeled off my gloves. Dad was already outside, hands on hips, squinting at the old Chevy.
“I think I could get this running again,” he said as I made my way over.
“But you won’t,” I told him.
“But I won’t,” he agreed. He sighed and scrubbed at his patchy scalp. “You think we could burn it all down and start over?”
“We could do that,” I replied amiably. It was only about the thirtieth time we’d had this conversation and that he’d suggested that particular remedy. “But then you’d always wonder what you’d left buried.”
“You really think there’s anything worth saving?”
“You asking about the house, or about you?” I asked.
He snorted. “I get enough of that crap from my shrink, I don’t need it from you, too.”
Wheels crunched on gravel. I shaded my eyes with my hand. We didn’t have much in the way of visitors these days, and I didn’t recognize the car. “Expecting someone?” I asked.
“Hell, no,” Dad said.
The car parked. The door opened, and Ethan stepped out, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans.
“Should I get the shotgun?” Dad asked.
“Dad.” I gave him a look. “Maybe the baseball bat. Just in case.”
He chuckled. Ethan hadn’t moved, standing by the car with one hand on the door. I approached slowly, arms crossed.
“Hey,” he said. He’d lost weight since I last saw him, the hollows of his cheeks deeper. He was holding a little stuffed hedgehog, which he held out to me. “I got you this,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “When you were in the hospital, at the gift shop, but then I never … Anyway, it made me think of you.”
I stepped forward, just close enough to snag it with the tips of my fingers. The hedgehog was clutching a heart between its paws that said “Get Well Soon.” “It made you think of me,” I said. “Because I’m prickly?”