P.P.S. Wherever you go, I hope you’re not alone. If I was ever strong—if I ever did a single good or brave thing in my life—it was only because I had you and your father to be strong for.
The letter leaves a catch in my throat, an ache in my chest.
All this time, I still thought Arthur was trapped, cursed to carry on his mother’s work. But he wasn’t. He came home to bury his parents and found a letter setting him free. He never had to take up the sword.
Right now, he could be living in a cute two-bedroom apartment in Phoenix, haunted by nothing more alarming than mice. He could be working nights and dating a dental hygienist. He could be a professor or a happily starving artist or anything he wanted.
But he’s here, all alone, paying a terrible price so that no one else has to. And if he has made mistakes—if he let a monster slink out into the night, hunting Gravely blood—hasn’t he paid enough for it?
I fold the letter carefully along the tattered lines and slip it in my pocket. I swallow twice. “You’re right. You shouldn’t have read that.”
Jasper’s eye roll is almost audible. “Okay sure, but I did, and so did you, and now we both know the truth.”
“That we are criminals and degenerates?”
“That every Warden makes a choice. It’s not inherited or destined or whatever. A few of them had families, right? And do you know what happened to their kids? They moved away and got married and had normal lives! Nothing kept them here, not fate, not blood.” Jasper is leaning toward me now, speaking clearly, like a teacher talking to a sullen and slightly slow child. “The Wardens chose that place. And that means we can choose, too.”
“I get what you’re saying but”—someone hits the brakes in my brain, tires squealing—we?”
Jasper looks at me for a long time then. Long enough for me to notice the spongy, sleepless bags beneath his eyes, the new lines carved beside his mouth, the wispy not-quite-stubble of an unshaven teenager. Then he says, horribly slowly, “You aren’t the only homeless kid in this town, Opal.” In his eyes I can see the reflections of doors and stairs he’s only seen in dreams, the ghostly map of a house that isn’t his.
All the air seems to evaporate out of my bloodstream. I’m dizzy, breathless with emotions I can’t even name. Fury, maybe, for the years of secrets between us, and fear for what happens next. But also something acid and viscous, bubbling noxiously in my throat: envy.
“You can’t ever go back there. Promise me you won’t.” My fingers are biting into the turf, ripping roots.
Jasper is closing his laptop, sliding it between the textbooks in his backpack, zipping it shut. He stands, looking at me with that tired, distant expression back on his face. “Why? Because you want me safe, or because you want the house for yourself?”
“Oh, go to hell—”
“You haven’t been able to make up your mind, have you? But I have.” His smile is strangely gentle. “Nobody—not you, not that house—is going to tell me what to do with my life.”
Jasper picks up his blue plastic tray and leaves me alone at the edge of the field.
I waste the rest of my lunch break kicking rocks at the Tractor Supply dumpsters, periodically shouting swears. It doesn’t help; by the time I clock in I’m still so mad that Frank opens his mouth to bitch at me for being late and then slowly closes it and scurries down the cat toy aisle instead.
I ring up four customers without making eye contact. I don’t look up until a cool, not-from-around-here voice says, “Good evening, Opal.”
I hadn’t seen her approach the counter: a pretty woman with her watch turned to the inside of her wrist and a smile that looks like it was clipped out of a magazine and glued to her chin.
I’m not surprised; I always knew Elizabeth Baine wouldn’t give up easy.
I greet her with the aggressive apathy of a cashier on the sixth hour of her shift. “Find everything you need, ma’am?”
“Yes, thank you.” She places a pack of gum and a matchbook on the counter, one of those embarrassing souvenirs that says My Old Kentucky Home in blue script. I ring her up and she draws a matte black card out of her purse. She doesn’t hand it to me.
“Anything else I can help you with?”
She taps the card on the counter. “We’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”
“Well, here I am.” If she’s trying to rattle me, she shouldn’t have tried it here. I’ve stood behind this counter and smiled down eight years of lewd suggestions, one attempted robbery, and more than a hundred 4-H-club moms with highlights and out-of-date coupons.