“Because you did something you shouldn’t have, once. To keep the two of us together.” She pauses, raising her eyes. “And there are consequences for that. One of which is that we can’t go into the world.” A recitation: same words each time.
“Good girl.”
She winds a strand of hair around her finger. “What you did, Coop—was it something bad?”
A thorny question. “I did what I had to do.” I reach out and press my hand over hers. “He has a sister,” I say, remembering: many years ago, a girl who tagged along on that fishing trip, her nose in a book. The last I heard, she was living in England.
Finch seems to take some comfort in this. Still, she picks up the rest of the apple and climbs onto my lap and cries hard, her sobs filling the cabin with a sound that lances and burns. Stomach, chest, throat. This is a new agony for me—to hear her suffer, to not be able to take it away. It’s not like the cuts and bruises and bee stings of life, hurts that will throb but then fade away: the skin healing, the swelling going down.
“It’s not fair,” she sobs. “It’s not fair at all.”
I rest my chin on top of her head and hold her and tell her I know: I know it’s not fair. She sits there with me, knees tucked beneath her chin, and it’s a long time before she stops shaking.
FOUR
Scotland materializes in the yard. I say it that way because that’s what he does each time, just shows up, appears out of nowhere, like a ghost, like fog. We never see him coming through the woods, we never hear him, and let me assure you: I keep an eye out. Never once have I seen him before he got to the yard. Never once have I heard a noise. No sticks cracking, no rustle of leaves. He’s that quiet. I am fairly certain he takes some sort of sick pleasure in surprising us because each time, I know the look on my face must be one of sheer terror, and each time, he breaks into a laugh at the sight of it. He throws back his head and shows his ugly teeth and roars, his whole body shaking hard, delighted.
“Where’s Jake?” His raspy voice, just there, all of a sudden.
I’m at the edge of the garden, cutting back the raspberry bushes, absorbed in thinking about what Finch and me are gonna do, how much time we’ve got. “You ever think about finding some sort of hobby, Scotland? Something besides spying on your neighbors.”
Well, maybe that sounds rude. Unnecessary. But here’s the thing. That first time he showed up in the yard with the flare and the rabbit—those newspapers he brought, they weren’t just a random assortment. They were carefully selected. Every single one of them had an article about me. Turned out Cindy’s parents had exerted their influence and gotten the word out, far and wide. Made me look like some kind of lunatic. One of them even had a big headline that said AMERICAN PRODIGAL, just like what Scotland had called me. Scotland, in that subtle and insidious way of his, was sending a message that he knew who I was, what I’d done, why Finch and me were in the woods. He wanted me to know he had me. I pictured him watching us through his spotting scope, reading the papers, curating the ones that had something about me in them, then making his delivery with the AK-47 strapped across his back. Well, I never mentioned those papers and their content to him—I refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing just how much they ruffled me—but I decided right then and there that I could never let my guard down around him. I could never trust him.
I continue cutting the bushes to the ground, piling the branches behind me. Working faster. Crow is perched on Scotland’s shoulder, and when I look at him, he opens his beak and caws, mouthing off.
“No time for hobbies,” Scotland says, placing a stack of newspapers on the porch. He still brings them, from time to time. Finch likes to read them, I never even look. “Besides, ‘Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.’ That’s what the Good Book says. Now, back to the matter of Jake. Tell me what’s going on. It’s the fifteenth. He should be here by now.”
I shake my head. It’s only been a few hours since I had to tell Finch. “You sure do like to keep track of things, don’t you, Scotland.”
“As a matter of fact, I do, Cooper. I’ve always kept a calendar. A journal, you might call it, though it’s more just a log of what happens each day. Fastidious. ‘Attentive to and concerned about detail.’ That’s what my daddy used to call me, and I do believe he was right.”
Finch, who’d been at the back of the house paying respects to Susanna the chicken, bounds around to the front yard. “Scotland!” She runs to him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Jake’s dead,” Finch says.