More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“And I’m proud of you for lying to your mom.”
“The thing is, Vee—your mom, she wouldn’t understand. She thinks that boys like Brandon are perfectly normal.”
“Boys are just like girls, in almost every way. But men … men are demons, Vee.”
“Thanks, Vee,” he says. “Thanks. I’m glad you can tell. See, I get rid of mine.” “How?” His smile softens a little. “I have a system. I save the other men. I keep them from turning into monsters. When they start to go bad, I help them.” He
“That’s for me to know, and it’s not anything you ever need to worry about. Because you’re never going to fill up with that muck, and you’re never going to let a man get his filth anywhere near you. Right?”
The thing sees her back with wide brown eyes. The whites of the eyes are red. There is a froth of saliva on the chin, and the froth is pink because of the blood that seeps from the cut-wide corners of the lips. The thing is a man. The man is on the ground, his arms and legs spread in an X just like the big wooden one. He is trying so hard to scream. Vera points the flashlight at the thing’s middle, instead of at his eyes, so as not to blind him. The light illuminates his face, though. The formerly-white cotton that gags his mouth is stained brown and red and pink. It is jammed deep into his
...more
“Shhh,” Vera says. “You have to be quiet.” “I’m not the first,” the man whispers frantically. “He has a whole setup down here, he’s done this before. He has a routine, a schedule, he’s organized. And he’s crazy, he thinks he has to get something out of me, I don’t know—I’m chained up over a drain so the smell doesn’t—”
“He’s had you for thirteen days now. I know it’s been a challenge,” she adds, using the phrase her sixth-grade teacher uses to soften the blow when she fails yet another spelling test. “I know it’s been difficult for you, and you’re probably worried that it’ll keep going like this forever. So I thought I should let you know that he’s going to kill you tomorrow. It’ll be over really soon.”
Wonder if she watches? Wonder if she loves me the way I love her?
She’d wondered as a kid if they’d date, get married, have children of their own, have a home. She’d wondered because he was the boy she knew best and that seemed like the likeliest path for the two of them, and because nobody had ever told her that not wanting to marry men at all was an option.
She needed a bed that offered nowhere at all to hide. This one would be perfect.
“I don’t know,” he says angrily. He loses his balance for a moment, skidding a little down the slope toward the muddy creekbed. “That’s what ‘missing’ means, dumbass.” Vera rolls her eyes. “I meant where did he tell you he was going, when he left. Don’t call me a dumbass.”
“Do you think he ran off?” she asks, and Brandon’s face twists with some combination of pain and fury. The curve of his cheek shifts as quickly as a caught fish jerking on a line. “Sorry,” she adds. “It’s just … him and your mom were always fighting, I thought maybe—” “Shut up,” he growls, tears still spilling down his cheeks, his lower lip wet with spit. “You shouldn’t talk about things you don’t know anything about. He didn’t leave us, he wouldn’t ever leave us. He’s not like your dad. Something must have happened to him.”
“You’re gross and it’s your own fault you’re here. Maybe if you were a better dad, you would have been able to get away.” That does the trick. The man lets out a hiccuping little sob. Pink foam gathers at the corners of the mouth, and something inside Vera flushes with heat. This. This is what she wants. She crouches down so she’s at eye level with the man. “Do you like it down here? Do you like what’s been happening to you?” The head droops to one side, then another. The mouth pouts into an “O” shape. It’s the closest she’s going to get to a definitive “no.”
Vera keeps the light trained on the man’s face so she doesn’t miss anything. “Well,” she whispers. “You should have thought of that.” She pauses for a moment, taking an inventory of the words she knows, the worst ones, the ones she doesn’t often use but wants to learn to wield smoothly, without stuttering or pausing. She puts the full weight of her fury behind the word. “You should have thought of that before you raised Brandon to be such a cunt.”
But then a sound comes from overhead: four sharp taps on the ceiling.
“You seem lonely now, too,” Duvall ventured. He rested his hand between them again, a persistent invitation. “You don’t need to be.” Vera shook her head, keeping her eyes away from the smooth, thin skin of his wrist. “You have no idea what I need.”
“Nah, Vee. That house would never let you leave.”
“I loved you too,” Vera whispered quickly, unwilling to let Duvall into the conversation she’d wanted to have with her mother for as long as she could remember. “And I hated you. I’ve always hated you.”
“Mom?” Vera calls after her. Daphne doesn’t look back, but she does pause for a moment, her hand resting on the banister. “Oh, no,” she says softly, thoughtfully. “No, Vera. I don’t think you need to call me that anymore.”
It’s okay, her friend says, wrapping her up in warmth as she sobs. Hush now, Vera-baby. Hush now.
She put her full weight into smashing his head hard as she could, trying with all her might to break the floorboards her father laid back before Vera was born. But of course, the floorboards were strong and the joinery was tight and the spaces between the wood were filled with decades of dust and skin and blood and sweat and breath, and the Crowder House held strong. James Duvall broke first.
“I want to see you.”
Her fingers went numb with the work of pulling apart a woman she’d never truly known. Viscous fluid sprayed across Vera’s chest, her throat, her face, leaving the taste of sweet bottled lemonade behind.
