And my focus is only on Bee. She steps toward the trees, where Parker vanished—she’s looking at something.
Another figure slinks back into the evergreens.
Someone had been watching us, and now they’re trying to slip away unseen.
But Bee sees him, and she glances back at us. “Just go,” she says. “I’ll catch up.”
“No!” I try to call out, but she doesn’t look back. She sprints into the forest, into the dark, where the light from the fire doesn’t reach. And she disappears.
“We can’t stay here,” Theo says, his face only a few inches from mine. There’s no time left, others will be here soon; they will have heard the gunshot, a sound that rips into dreams and wakes even the deepest sleepers.
Faye tears something, a piece of fabric, and ties it around my lower ribs, cinching it tight. The sudden pressure shoots a dagger through my body, and I let out a low moan.
“I can walk,” I mutter, but both Theo and Faye ignore my words.
Theo’s hands slide beneath my body, drawing me to his chest, and lifts me up into his arms. The motion makes me feel like I might vomit, the swing and jolt of it, but I press my face into his shoulder, my eyes against the fabric of his shirt—I tell myself this is all there is, my eyelashes against the soft, worn cotton of his shirtsleeves, my breathing against his collarbone. I have no body, no pain, I am only lungs and eyelashes against the sturdy warmth of my husband. Nothing else.
“You have to get as far past the boundary as you can,” Faye says, touching my back between my shoulder blades. “I’ll try to stall them.”
“Thank you,” Theo says.
There is a pause, an exchange of looks—a goodbye between Faye and Theo. We might never see her again.
Theo moves into the trees, and the pain finds me, it drives up my rib bones, up my spine, clawing its way into my mind, screaming at me: I am here! I am a fire burning a hole through your flesh. I am cutting you open, making you bleed.
I press my face harder to Theo’s chest, I bite down, clenching my teeth, my jaw aching.
You can’t carry me all the way to the truck, I think.
Or maybe I say it aloud.
“We don’t have a choice,” Theo answers.
We move down the path, Colette leading the way, clutching the baby to her chest. I try to open my eyes again, to peer back over Theo’s shoulder for signs of anyone coming after us, but I can’t seem to raise my eyelids now.
We’re leaving Pastoral. We’re leaving my sister behind.
Yet, I know why she went after him.
Him.
In the river of my mind, I’m starting to remember: He might be to blame for everything that’s happened. Everything we can’t remember. The man that Bee once loved.
And now she’s gone to set things right.
BEE
He’s a monster.
He set the fire and watched it burn, knowing Faye and Colette and the baby were inside. He knew that if they were dead, no one else would try to leave to go get help for the child. And he watched Parker point his gun at Theo, probably hoping he’d shoot us all to keep us from leaving. We are traitors, after all. A problem to be dealt with.
Better dead than alive to tell all his secrets.
But with my eyes peering through the dark, seeing for the first time in too long, I trail Levi through the trees. His footsteps are an echo across the hard summer ground, his shadow scattering among the tall pines.
Drops begin to fall from the sky, a storm sinking over the valley—but I no longer fear the rain.
Levi ducks around the backside of Pastoral, and the community gardens come into view—rain catching on the neat, tidy rows of cornstalks and vegetables, on bright green leaves, and my eyes stall briefly, marveling at the sight. I had forgotten the shimmery quality of raindrops, and it sends a spark of emotion through me, a feeling like I might cry.
But Levi has stopped at the corner of the garden, only a few yards away, his shadow stretched long and lean in the moonlight, watching me.
Maybe he knew I was following him all along, and now he’s led me here, to the garden, away from the eyes of others. Where he can end it.
“You escaped the closet,” he says softly, with tenderness in his voice, a sound that now makes me cringe. He moves closer but I don’t back away. “You’ve always been strong-willed.”
I feel my jaw tighten, my eyes blink then refocus, afraid my vision will slip away at any moment—only a temporary reprieve from the dark. “You were just going to let them burn?” I ask.
“Sometimes there must be sacrifices to make the community stronger.”