Bone observes me for a time. I sit up taller in my seat. I want to tell him I’m grown enough to hear it all. Let it free. When he doesn’t say anything, I think about cracking his head open just to get a look at his thoughts.
A small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, so soft I almost miss it. “I remember when you were born.” His words a warm vibration, tucking itself around my heart. “So tiny I could hold you in one hand.” Bone splays his palm open—the size of a dinner plate. I don’t speak, for fear this rare moment might evaporate.
The sparkle from Bone’s eyes dwindles, his brow dips. “Your mother wasn’t always who she is now.” Bone Layer says this so earnestly I believe him. I think about the picture of my mother and Gabby at the big Baptist convention. My mama looked wholesome back then. Pure, even. “She was very different before...”
Before she got pregnant with me, and I ruined her life, I finish in my head.
“You were her greatest joy.” Bone says this as if he heard my thoughts. “She wanted to do right by you. Sometimes that means making sacrifices. Someday you’ll understand.”
“Well,” I say, “I won’t hold my breath waiting for someday.” Then I inform him about the worsening storm and how the roads are flooding and how Oscar will bring him home after they process everything.
The rain washes down on me in buckets as I dash out to the truck. The windshield wipers swat the rain, pathetic-like. I pull around to the side entrance underneath the flimsy metal carport and wait for them to bring Grandmama out.
Rain wraps the awning in sheets, trapping me in its watery curtain veil.
I glance into the darkness of the truck’s floorboard. I can’t see my little red suitcase, but I can feel it. Calling for me to open it up already. I slip another glance at the door. My hand reaches down into the dark at the same time Callie rounds the corner to the short hallway with Grandmama on her elbow.
The suitcase is going to have to wait a little bit longer.
I stretch across the bench seat to open the passenger door.
“Drive safe now,” Callie says, after she helps Grandmama into the truck.
Grandmama pats Callie’s hand softly with a polite expression on her face as she tells her thank-you. Not two seconds after Callie shuts the door, she grimaces in disgust.
“Her belly smells of rot.” Grandmama’s cragged voice cuts through the silence. She only says things like that when she thinks someone has been an adulterer. I’ve seen Callie and her husband uptown with their family occasionally. They seem as normal as any other couple raising four kids. But they haven’t gone to church in some time, and that’s sin enough for Grandmama.
“Only thing rotten around here is you,” I say, and I throw the truck into Drive.
“Don’t you go smarting off at me, just because you’ve been lying and stealing and hiding secrets away.”
The cab of the truck is icy cold despite the heat of the summer. Grandmama has a way of sucking the warmth out of everything. I kick up the wipers as fast as they will go, and it’s still a sloppy blur on the windshield.
“What did you tell them about those babies?”
“Nothing they didn’t already know.” Her calm is infuriating.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You and I both know Bone didn’t kill them.”
“No, he certainly didn’t. Neither did I,” she says with a poignant look in my direction. “Maybe I should have shared more with them?” The threat clear in her narrowed stare.
“Well,” I say, shoring up my confidence, “maybe you should have. I guess you better get busy praying Bone doesn’t decide to tell them how you ordered him to bury me alive with those dead babies. Wouldn’t that be a hard pickle for you to explain your way out of?” I get the satisfaction of seeing her stiffen a touch.
A flash of lightning races across the sky and lights up the watery road ahead. I grip the steering wheel with two hands and slow down. A spray of water fans out from the tires, and we drive through it.
It doesn’t matter what Grandmama told the sheriff. I’ve already made up my mind that come Monday morning I’m going to tell Oscar everything that happened the night Gabby Newsome’s babies died, despite how crazy it’s going to sound.
I’ve also decided I’m never going to give Grandmama another drop of my Sin Eater Oil.
If I think about it, Sin Eater Oil isn’t the reason we are all in this situation right now. It’s not why Bone Layer was arrested. Sure, Sin Eater Oil killed those Newsome babies. And it will keep killing folks or making them sick. But it’s the death-talking that’s the real problem. You can’t have one without the other. That’s when it hits me.
“You don’t want me locked up, do you?”
“Am I supposed to want my only granddaughter to be hauled off to prison? Is that what you’d prefer?”
“No, that’s not it, you need me—you need my Sin Eater Oil. Else you can’t go on fixing up potions and shit, poisoning people around town, inflicting your own version of justice on everyone else.”
“Shut your mouth. Don’t you dare sass me. After all I’ve done for you, you ungrateful little beggar. Took you in after your mama left you, didn’t I? Wouldn’t have had a roof over your head nor food in your belly if it wasn’t for me. Taught you how to use your gift, how to do something worthwhile in this godforsaken world.”
Gift? It ought to be called a curse.
No, death-talking is not a gift once you take in the sum of it all. It’s a burden. One I’m exhausted from carrying. It anchors me here to this small town. To this life. To her.
“You’ve barely taught me anything, none of the real magic, anyway. All those recipes you keep locked up for yourself, hoarding that so-called power. You try to control everyone and everything around you. Manipulating us all to do your bidding, acting like you’re some holy saint sent here by God himself. Look at Papaw, you used him for years, and where did it get him? Six feet in the ground. Dead! From all the death-talking you made him do.”
“How dare you—”
Something smashes against the windshield of the truck. I swerve in response. A smear of blood covers the fractured glass. Darkness eats up the road ahead where the truck’s headlights shine until a flock of crows flies straight at us.
Bodies pound against the windshield. Caws of pain echo all around as bone crushes against steel. Until... BOOM! A single solid body punches the roof of the truck. Something large flies over the top, rolling as it hits the ground and flops to a halt.
A visceral image of Adaire being run over shoves itself into my brain. The agonizing, white-hot pain she felt. The iron taste that pooled in her mouth and choked out her last breath.
I stomp on the brake as we slide toward the ditch. The rain-slicked tires fishtail left, then right until the back of the truck whacks a tree.
My head strikes the door window.
Stars spark my vision.
