“Honest to God. You can call them up right now if you want.” I sigh. “Look, I didn’t come here to make your life miserable.”
He snorts at that, but he’s deathly pale.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Cos whispers, and he grimaces.
“Who did it?” he breathes.
“They don’t know yet,” I reply.
“And you don’t remember? You saw the guy. You say you remember all sorts of things, that you remember my mom dying—” He stops, looks away.
Yeah. I wish it was that simple. “Look, I came to ask you something.”
“Shoot.” He says it grimly. He looks like he means it literally.
“You know how I kept seeing the swan and the ax in my dreams?” At his blank look, I continue, “I also see a huge eye watching me. Does that tell you anything?”
“Does that…? Have you lost it? What eye?”
“Maybe it was a tattoo or a logo on his jacket. Something like that.”
“You know what, you’re a crazy son of a bitch.” He turns and starts walking away. “Leave me alone, Merc.”
“Wait. Please don’t go.”
That’s Cos, not me. I expect him to turn and fling some insult at her, and then I’ll punch the shit out of him, but he just stops. She has an effect on him—or maybe it’s her gentleness?
Kindness, I think again, kinda randomly. Like when I called and asked how he was. It catches him off guard, confuses him. Maybe it reminds him of something. If it’s of his long-dead mom, or a time when things were simpler, I’m not sure I want to know, not sure I want to feel sympathy.
In fact, I’m sure I don’t want to feel anything but rage for him.
Can’t feel it though, not today, after telling him his mom is dead, has been dead all this time, and even worse...
He heads back toward us. “Okay, let’s have it. Who do you think did it?”
“Our dad.”
He snorts, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “Yeah, right.”
I keep my mouth shut. How did I erase it from my memory? The last part—the house, the stream, the man. How didn’t I connect what I know to the dreams, to the clues inside the fucking dreams?
How close Jasper Jones’s house is to Little River, and to that particular bend. Ross’s house.
“Yesterday,” I say, “when we left, you vanished. But you didn’t, not really. You went home. It’s nearby.”
“I don’t live there anymore.”
“You went to confront him. You suspected it, Ross.”
“Fuck you.” He’s glaring at me. “Fuck you and fuck this shit. Go away, back to your awesome little life. I’ve got work to do.”
He isn’t that much older than me, but right this moment, he looks about a hundred years old, face drawn, eyes empty, mouth a slash. He’s my shadow self, I think, my dark counterpart, my reversed twin. He got the abusive father. I got the nice mom. His mom died, while mine got a kind boyfriend. He’s facing a life tinged by his past, where I’m looking at a future with the sweetest girl.
It’s almost as if my nightmares belong to him by right, and I only borrowed them, carried them for a while before returning them to him.
No wonder he’s so fucking mad at me.
I take Cos to one of the two diners in town. Mom used to work in this one for a while when we lived here. We’re mostly quiet as we order. She asks for the strawberry milkshake I remember always asking for as a kid, and I get coffee in an effort to shake off the exhaustion I drag behind me like a leaden ball.