Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

“I’m sorry,” he said, his signs and expression sincere. He put on his sunglasses and pointed to a bandage on my arm. Thankfully, the knife had barely grazed both it and my side. “What happened?”

“The same thing that happened to you, only from the opposite end. Other people who were possessed attacked me, but I wanted you to know, it’s safe now. It’s okay. They won’t come after you again. The being that instigated it all has been killed.”

Relief washed through him, and I led him to a table to sit down.

“Are you okay here? Have they been slapping your hands with rulers or anything? I’ve heard nuns do that.”

The mother superior cleared her throat. Apparently, she knew sign, too.

“We enrolled him in school,” Sister Mary Elizabeth said, hardly able to contain her excitement. “At the School for the Deaf in Santa Fe. He’ll live there during the week, then come home on the weekends.”

Quentin didn’t seem quite so thrilled. He pressed his mouth together.

I leaned into him. “Are you okay with that?” When he shrugged, I asked the sister, “He’ll come home on the weekends?”

She smiled. “Here.” She put a hand on his arm. “He’ll come here until we can find a more permanent home. Oh!” She looked at me. “And he can stay with you every so often, too, if you’d like.”

“I’d love,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder at Cookie. “I have a feeling Amber will be wanting to learn ASL.”

Cookie nodded and offered me a dreamy expression. “He is darling.”

When I signed what she said to Quentin, he blushed and offered a soft thank-you, only he spoke it, his vowels clipped and his voice deep and soft.

“Okay,” Cookie continued, “I’m in love.”

Quentin tapped my hand. “I have a name sign for you.”

I straightened in surprise. “Really? Wow.”

He took his right hand, splayed his fingers, and formed a modified eight where his middle finger was bent forward slightly more than the rest. Then he touched the tip of it to his right shoulder and twisted it up and out away from him, shaking it ever so slightly.

I put my hands over my heart. It was the sign for sparkle, only from the shoulder. He was telling me that I sparkled. I felt a sting in the backs of my eyes, and he dipped his head sheepishly. I couldn’t help it. I threw my arms around his neck. He let me hug him a solid minute before asking, “Can I stay with you sometimes?”

“I would love for you to stay with me sometimes.”

I leaned in and kissed his cheek to the abrasive sound of the mother superior clearing her throat again.

* * *

“Well, that boy is a living doll,” Cookie said as we made our way to the third floor of our apartment building.

“Isn’t he?”

There were still cops outside, still investigators combing the area inside and out of yellow caution tape. They had taken my clothes as evidence, but the only blood on them, besides mine, was Reyes’s. Would they know that? Was he in a DNA database somewhere?

“How’s your head?” she asked. “Are you okay?” She was such a dear friend. She put up with so much from me. And it was a wonder she was still alive, all things considered.

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Good.” As I turned to unlock my door, she slapped me upside the head. Fred thrust forward and knocked against the doorjamb.

I turned back to her, aghast. “That head is concussed, I’ll have you know.”

“I know. And I’m glad, for your information.”

“That’s not a very neighborly attitude.”

“You almost die right outside the apartment building, and you didn’t think to, perhaps, yell my name? Call out for help?”

“And what would you have done, Cook, besides get attacked coming to my rescue?”

“You know, that excuse is going to get old one of these days.” Her eyes watered, and she looked down. “Do you know how I felt when I found out Earl Walker had tortured you not fifty feet from me?”

The chambers in my heart squeezed shut.

Against my better judgment, Cookie needed to know the truth about what it really meant to be in my life.

I leaned back against my door and folded my arms. “Amber was there,” I said, my voice a mere whisper.

Alarm rushed through her. “What? Amber was there last night?”

“No. That night. When Earl came.”

Her alarm ebbed, and she took a step back. “I don’t understand.”

“When I walked into the apartment,” I said, unable to stop a floodgate of tears as they pushed past my lashes, “Earl was there. And so was Amber.”

Cookie’s hand flew to cover her mouth. She’d had no idea, and I’d been too much of a coward to tell her.

I wiped at my cheeks, angry that all I seemed to be able to do lately was cry. Because crying helped so much. “She was asleep on my sofa.” I saw the image in my mind so clearly, and my stomach lurched with the thought as bad as it had that night. “He had a gun to her head.”

She covered her whole face and shook as a sob wrenched through my chest. I tightened my arms and curled into myself. I was about to lose one of the best things that had ever happened to me, but she had to know the truth.

“As long as I was quiet and cooperated, he said she’d live. You’d both live. He let me lead her to your apartment. She was so sleepy, she never saw him. But he was there because of me, Cookie. Amber almost died because of me.”