The next day was a bad one. The pain woke me up, one pain joined by others in a chorus singing at top volume inside me. I held a bag of ice over my eye, trying to remember when Grant had nailed me there. My ribs hurt where he had tackled me. My knee hurt. My hands felt like the arthritic claws of an invalid, the knuckles swollen and raw.
Worst of all was the feeling that came to me just after I woke up, the biggest sucker punch of all, the sudden realization that the conversation with Natalie wasn’t a dream.
I stayed inside all morning. It was the wrong way to deal with it, but so the hell what. I sure didn’t feel like going down to the Glasgow. Or seeing anyone. Or talking to anyone. I stayed inside with the ice pressed against my face and a bottle of painkillers sitting right there on my kitchen table. I found myself counting the minutes until I could take another one. A very bad sign, something I’d seen before. But I didn’t give one flying rat’s ass.
I thought she would call me. I honestly believed that. She would call me. She would tell me it was all a mistake. It had been her terrible state of mind the night before. She had no idea what she was saying.
Or else she would come over, just as she had before. One knock on the door and she would open it and step inside. Just like the last time.
I had one lousy American beer in the fridge. I killed that, then opened up a bottle of Wild Turkey. I remembered the bottle we had shared at her house. This is Natalie’s brand, I thought. I wondered if she was drinking some herself that day, maybe sitting at that big table in the empty dining room with her mother. I wondered if she was feeling bad.
Here’s to you, Natalie. Here’s to you.
I would have sat there all day, just like that. I would have drunk. I would have filled up my ice bag. I would have counted the minutes until I could take my next pill. That would have been the whole day, right there.
But then it started to snow.
It snowed hard enough that I had to make a choice. I could stay inside all day and let it bury me, or I could go out, no matter how bad I felt, and fight it.
What’s it gonna be, Alex? I looked in the mirror. What’s it gonna be?
I threw my coat on, went outside, and fired up the truck. I ran the snowplow up and down the road a couple of times, then switched to the shovel. The hard work made me feel sick to my stomach, but I kept going. I punished myself. When I had the last cabin dug out, I leaned over and threw up like Mount Vesuvius all over the snowbank. When I was done, I shoveled it all away and covered it up with more snow.
Then I figured, what the hell. I’m going to Jackie’s.
He dropped his towel when I stepped into the place. He stood there looking at me for a long time, then he just shook his head and asked me if I wanted an omelet.
“That would be just what the doctor ordered,” I said. “I’ve got a pretty empty tank right now.”
“I see you didn’t listen to anything I told you the other day.”
“I listened, Jackie. I really did.”
“She dragged you right into it, didn’t she? Who was it this time? The same three guys?”
“No, just one,” I said. “I’m sure he’s looking pretty bad, too.”
“This isn’t a game, Alex. You’re gonna get yourself killed.”
“You may not have to worry anymore.”
“What are you saying?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it right now. Let’s just say that Natalie and I are taking a little break again.”
I couldn’t tell if he was buying that one, but he made me my omelet and brought it over to me by the fireplace. When I was done eating, I put my feet up. I almost started to feel a little better than miserable.
Vinnie came in a little while later. He stood over me, studying my face like an insurance adjuster examining a car wreck.
“Alex,” he said, “you’re not that good-looking when you’re healthy. You can’t afford to keep making things worse.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I knew you’d make me feel better.”
“You gonna tell me what happened this time?”
“Eventually. If you sit here long enough.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he said. He sat down in the other chair and put his feet up next to mine. His face was windburned, and now that he had taken the tape off his ear, you could see where the bullet had ripped off a good chunk of it. Between the two of us, we must have looked like the unluckiest pair of losers in the whole world.
Our luck turned even worse when the door opened. Michael Grant stepped in, brushing the snow off his shoulders. He was holding a hat. The hat. He looked the place over, stopping when he saw me sitting there by the fire.
“McKnight,” he said as he came over to me. There was a big purple bruise on his left cheek, and he had a shiner around his right eye. But aside from that he didn’t look half as bad as I did. It didn’t make me any happier to see him standing in my bar.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
I didn’t bother to stand up. But Vinnie did. Grant gave him a cool, even look and introduced himself. “Alex and I had a little episode yesterday,” he said.
“What about at the funeral? Was that an episode, too?”
“No,” Grant said. “That was a very bad day for everyone.”
“Vinnie, sit down,” I said.
He did, with obvious reluctance.
“I asked you what you were doing here,” I said to Grant.
“I came to give you this,” he said. He held up the hat.
“I don’t want it,” I said.
“I figured Ms. Reynaud might.”
“I wouldn’t know. You’ll have to ask her.”
He looked down at me. “You’re making this hard, McKnight.”
“How did you even know I’d be here?”
“You’re in the book. When I drove by, I recognized your truck out front.”
I took the hat from him. “Okay, I’ve got the hat. You can leave now.”
“I need to talk to you. Maybe your friend can excuse himself for a minute.”
“Maybe his friend can kick your ass all the way back to the Soo,” Vinnie said.
Grant put his hands up. “I came to talk,” he said. “That’s it. I don’t want any more trouble.”
“Then you picked the wrong place,” Vinnie said.
“All right, take it easy,” I said. “If the man has something to say, let him say it.”
“Can we talk outside?”
“So we can freeze to death?”
“This’ll only take a minute, McKnight. It’s about Ms. Reynaud.”
I was about to tell him I was officially not interested in that topic anymore, but I figured it was none of his business. “You’ve got one minute,” I said.
“Don’t go out there,” Vinnie said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t think he’s gonna try anything stupid. Not on my home field.”
“Just sit down here,” Vinnie said, getting up. “I’ll be over at the bar.”
Grant didn’t look happy about it, but when Vinnie left us alone, he sat down in the empty chair across from me.
“You spend a lot of time here?” he asked.
“You’re wasting your minute.”
“Look, we don’t have to have a Kodak moment here, okay? Let’s just say I feel bad about the way things have happened.”
“That’s big of you.”
“You never went over to Marty’s house.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”
“I called him, told him to expect you.”
“Yeah? Sorry if he was disappointed.”
“I told him what you told me, about Natalie Reynaud in Blind River. I asked him if he knew anything about her. I also asked him if he was in Batchawana Bay that day.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he was up there. You were right.”
“Did he say why?”
“No,” Grant said. “He said he’d tell me about it later.”
“Did he?”
“That was yesterday. I haven’t heard from him since.”
“Since yesterday?”
“I called his wife. Marty never came home last night. Never called. Nothing. He just disappeared. I’ve been looking all over.”
“So why did you come here?”
“I’m worried, McKnight. I’m running out of ideas. You remember what I was telling you about the devil of Blind River?”
“Yeah.”
“I was thinking your friend Natalie might know something,” he said. “Have you talked to her about this?”
“Not today.”
“I thought the two of you were close.”
“Your minute just ended.” “He said one more thing, McKnight. I think it’s important.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he didn’t know the devil’s family still lived in Blind River.”
I thought about that one. It found its way into my gut and started eating at me.
“Grant,” I finally said, “are you telling me-”
“I tried to look her up, McKnight. She’s not listed. I had no idea how to contact her.”
“I’ll call her right now,” I said. I told him to stay where he was, then went to the bar and grabbed Jackie’s phone. Vinnie and Jackie were both there, watching me. I gave them a little nod of my head and dialed.
The line was busy.
I let him sit over there by the fire for a few minutes while I waited to try again. The line was still busy.
Grant got to his feet just as I was hanging up again. He didn’t say a word. He just walked out the door.
I watched him go out, then looked over at Jackie and Vinnie. They were as confused as I was. When I headed for the door myself, Vinnie tried to follow me. I told him to go sit back down. I was just going to see what the hell Grant was doing.
When I opened the door, I saw Grant pacing back and forth next to my truck. It was snowing harder now. There was already a thin white layer on Grant’s head.
“What are you doing out here?” I said. I had brought the hat out with me.
“There was no answer when you called her?”
“The line was busy.”
“Both times?”
“Yeah, both times.”
“I tell you,” he said. He started pacing back and forth. “I got a real bad feeling about this. I think we should go out there.”
“Are you serious?”
“Come on, you gotta help me. You gotta take me out to her house.”
“You are serious.”
“Yes,” he said. “Aren’t you worried?”
“I can’t believe this…” I looked up at the falling snow. Truth was, I was getting just as worried as he was, no matter how things stood between Natalie and me.
“Please, McKnight. I’m begging you.”
“Hold on,” I said.
I went back inside and called her one more time. The line was still busy. I told Jackie and Vinnie what I had to do. Jackie yelled at me. Vinnie just shook his head. Then I went back outside.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I’m driving.”
“Okay,” he said. He got in and we took off toward the Soo.
We weren’t even out of Paradise yet when I happened to look over at him. He was holding the hat in his lap and rocking his head back and forth, ever so slightly. It looked like he was wound tighter than piano wire. Then for one quick moment I looked down and spotted something gray and metallic in his coat pocket.
“Hey, look at that,” I said, pointing out his side window.
“What?”
I jammed on the brakes and sent him flying into the dashboard. As he was bouncing back, I reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the gun. I had it pointed right at his head before he knew it was gone.
“What the hell’s going on?” I said to him. “What were you gonna do with this?”
He caught his breath and looked at me. The gun was two inches from his forehead.
Something was wrong. The gun didn’t feel right. It was way too light.
“What the hell?” I said, pulling it away from his head.
“It’s not real,” he said.
“It’s plastic,” I said. “It’s a cheap plastic toy. What the hell are you doing with a toy gun in your pocket?”
He started to say something. He gave up and shrugged his shoulders.
“Was this gonna be for me? In case I didn’t help you?”
He didn’t look at me. He picked the hat off the floor of the truck and brushed it off. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“I should just beat the living shit out of you right now,” I said. “You were gonna pull a toy gun on me?”
“I never would have used a real one. Give me that much.”
“Could you be any more of a jackass?” I took my foot off the brake and headed down the road again. “A toy gun. What were you gonna do when we got to customs?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Look, I told you I’m worried sick. My brother never disappeared before, okay? I wasn’t thinking straight.”
I shook my head and kept driving. Grant stayed quiet for a while. The snow started to come down harder. I began to worry about making it all the way out to Blind River. “I don’t know why you’re doing this now,” he finally said. “But I appreciate it.”
“Just shut the hell up,” I said. “I’m not doing it for you. If your stupid brother is over at her house, or if anything has happened to Natalie, I swear I’m gonna go after all three of you guys, one by one.”
He nodded his head slowly. “Fair enough.”
I rolled down the window, letting in an icy blast of air. “I’m gonna throw this away, if you don’t mind. If the customs guy sees it, he might not be amused.”
I threw it into the snowbank, then rolled up my window.
“I hate real guns,” he said. “All my life, since I was a little kid. Never went hunting with my father or anything. That was always Marty.”
“I’m not too fond of guns, either.”
I picked up the cell phone and called Natalie again. The line was still busy. That didn’t make sense to me. She wasn’t the type of person to sit around talking on the phone all day.
“So tell me,” I said, putting the phone down, “if your father said the devil lived in Blind River, I’m thinking that had to be Natalie’s father, Jean Reynaud. You ever hear that name?”
“No, I don’t think so. I just heard the last name.”
“You’ve got no idea what might have happened between them? Your father and Jean Reynaud?”
“I really don’t. Like I said, he might have told Marty something. He was the favorite son, after all.”
I picked up on the bitterness in his voice, but I wasn’t about to pursue it.
“What about New Year’s Eve?” I said. “Did your father ever say anything about that?”
He looked at me. “Which one?”
“There was a party over at the Ojibway, New Year’s Eve, 1973. You think your father might have been there?”
“I was a teenager,” he said. “I don’t remember it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was there. My father knew everybody.”
“Think he might have taken Natalie’s father outside and shot him in the back of the head?”
“God, what are you saying?”
“Is it possible?”
Grant just shook his head slowly.
“Let’s say he did,” I said. “Of course, first he made him take off his hat.”
Grant looked down at the hat in his hands.
“You’re saying this was the devil’s hat?”
“Who knows?” I said. “Maybe we’re about to find out.”
I kept driving. The snow kept coming down. The wind picked up and drove the snow sideways. Grant didn’t say anything for a long time. He sat there and looked at the hat.
We went over the International Bridge. I sure as hell didn’t think I’d be coming back this way so soon. This time, the wind and the blowing snow made it downright scary. When I stopped to pay the toll, the man asked me how bad it was, and told me they’d probably be closing the bridge until the wind let up. Then we rolled through Canadian customs and answered the questions, the man taking a hard look at our faces.
“What happened to you guys?” he said. “You both look like something the cat brought in.”
“A little disagreement,” I said. “We got carried away.”
He pressed us a little more, asked us where we were going, how long we’d be in Canada. I told him we were going to the clubs. Eventually, he let us go through.
We followed a snowplow for a few miles through town. When we hit the open road, I passed him and settled in for the long stretch to Blind River. It was still blowing hard.
“By the way,” I finally said, “everything your nephew told you, that whole business about me contacting your father, making him come out that night to the hotel, making him go back outside… You know he was just covering his ass because he lost track of the poor guy, right?”
“I’m open to that possibility now. I’ll say that much.”
“Afterward, I was just trying to find out what had happened. That’s why I came to the funeral.”
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “when you were getting worked over behind the church, that was me who was telling those guys to cool it.”
I thought about it. “I remember somebody saying something like that, but I don’t remember anybody actually stopping the other two guys.”
“I know,” he said. “Like I say, for what it’s worth. Which ain’t much.”
“No.”
“We all go to trial in a couple of weeks. I had to put the garage up to make bail.”
“That hardly seems fair,” I said. “Me, I got a nice four-day vacation in the hospital.”
“I’m not saying we’re even, McKnight. But you did get your shots in the other day. I’m still feeling it.”
I let that one go. I picked up the cell phone and gave Natalie one more try. The line was still busy.
A few miles later, we came to our first accident. One car was right in the middle of the road, pointed sideways, another car pushed into the ditch. I rolled my window down to see if anyone needed some help, but there was nobody around. A hundred yards later, I saw a house, with smoke blowing sideways from the top of the chimney. I figured everybody was inside that house, instant neighbors, waiting for the tow truck to come. I kept driving.
The next accident was just outside Thessalon, another car off the road, this time all the way down a steep embankment. A tow truck was on the scene, the man holding his hand in front of his face to ward off the blowing snow as he hooked a chain to the car’s trailer hitch.
“Getting bad out here,” Grant said.
“I’m not turning around now.”
“The man said the bridge was closing anyway. We couldn’t go back even if we wanted to.”
We came to Iron Bridge, saw a few more cars abandoned on the side of the road, already covered with six inches of new snow. We passed McKnight Road, but I didn’t smile at it this time. We passed the Mississauga Reserve. There was one more stretch of empty road until we finally reached Blind River. As we got closer to the town hall, we could see the trucks parked right on the road itself, next to a telephone pole that had fallen down across the entrance. A half-dozen men were hard at work, all of them wearing orange ski masks. With the lines down and the snow blowing harder than ever, the whole scene looked like the end of the world.
“Looks like the phones are out here,” Grant said. “You think that’s why her line’s been busy?”
“Could be,” I said. “Depending on when this pole went down.”
“Is her house coming up soon?”
“Couple more miles.”
“Okay, good.”
He was sitting up in his seat now, nervously turning the hat in his hands again. I was a little uptight myself, with no idea what we’d find at the house. When I got to the driveway, I put the plow down and pushed the snow off, all the way to the barn.
“I don’t see Marty’s truck here,” he said.
“Not at the moment,” I said. “Doesn’t mean he didn’t come out here.”
He opened his door and got out of the truck. I did the same, the driving snow stinging my face.
“God, this is painful,” he said. “What the hell are we doing? Is anybody even home?”
“Let’s go see.”
I went up the unshoveled walk to the front door, stepping carefully through the snow. It felt strange to be here now, with officially no relationship with the owner of this house, no good reason to be here beyond a general sense of dread. I wanted to know that Natalie was safe. That was all. After that, I never wanted to see this place again.
I tried the door. It was locked. I rang the bell and heard the faraway chiming in the empty house.
“What do we do now?” he said.
I looked around the place. The windows. If one of them is unlocked
…
Or wait. The back door. I led him around the house, working hard to get through the deep snow. There at the back, leading into the kitchen, was an old-fashioned Dutch door. The top section had a large window with nine separate panes. The lower-left pane, the one closest to the doorknob, was broken.
I turned the knob, wishing at that moment like all hell that I had a gun. A real one. I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Grant followed. My stomach was starting to burn. What the hell was going on here?
When we were both inside, I closed the door behind us, shutting out most of the noise of the wind. I could feel a draft cutting in through the broken pane. The room was cold. The power must have been out.
I saw broken glass all over the kitchen floor. The phone hung from its cord.
“Oh man,” Grant said as he saw the scene. “What happened?”
I went through the kitchen, crunching through the broken glass. There was more glass in the dining room, with several liquor bottles on the table, one turned over. I did a quick run-through of the rest of the house. In the dim light I didn’t see any more signs of violence, but when I was upstairs I noticed that both the bed in the guest room and the bed in Natalie’s old room were unmade. It shouldn’t have surprised me. Natalie had told me that she had brought her mother back here, but out of nowhere the line from Goldilocks and the Three Bears flashed through my mind. Somebody has been sleeping in my bed. What a strange thing to think of at a time like this. The burning in my stomach was getting worse.
“God damn it,” I said softly. “God damn it to hell. Where are you, Natalie?”
I went back downstairs to see Grant hanging up the phone.
“It’s dead,” he said. “Now what do we do?”
“I’m checking the basement,” I said. I opened the door and hit the light switch like an idiot. I went back and started opening the kitchen drawers. Somewhere she had to have a flashlight. I opened the silverware drawer, the napkins and candles drawer, the junk drawer. I pushed the pens and pencils around, looking for a flashlight. Come on, I thought. Everyone has a goddamned flashlight.
The next drawer was full of tools. A hammer, screwdrivers, pliers
…
There. A flashlight.
I picked it up and turned it on. The beam was weak, but it would have to do.
I went back to the basement steps, shone the light down the wooden steps to the concrete floor at the bottom. I could barely see anything. Grant followed me.
I started going down, step by step. The boards creaked.
I’m going to buy her a flashlight, I thought. A good one.
Another step. The air got colder.
As soon as I see her again, I thought, we’re going flashlight shopping. And I’m glad I’ve got this to think about right now because otherwise I’d be scared to death of what I’m going to find down here.
“Natalie,” I said out loud, “please don’t be down here.”
I did a quick scan with the flashlight, through each room filled with the decades of old household items, magazines, newspapers, boxes, and tin cans. Grant followed me from one room to the next, until we finally came to the little closet where Natalie had found all the pictures. But this time there was something strange going on. All the clutter on the shelves had been thrown onto the floor, and the shelves themselves were all slanting away from the wall, like someone had tried to pull them all off at once.
No. That wasn’t it. I grabbed one of the shelves and pulled. The whole unit moved in one piece. It was like a door. You couldn’t see it before because of all the stuff on the shelves, and the fact that the surface of the door was painted gray, just like the walls.
I pulled it all the way open and looked inside.
“What is that?” Grant said as he came closer. “What’s in there?”
I saw something that looked like wax paper. I reached down and touched it. There was something hard underneath. I pulled it out and unwrapped it in the thin beam of the flashlight. The first thing I saw was a long black rifle barrel. I pulled off more of the paper, slick with gun oil.
“What kind of gun is that?” he said.
“It looks like an old Thompson submachine gun.”
I shone the light down the barrel. Someone had plugged it with Cosmoline to keep the moisture out.
“Somebody knew what they were doing,” I said.
“Is that all that’s in there? Just guns?”
“Some shells, too,” I said, unwrapping an old cardboard box. I lifted another heavy bundle. “This one feels like a shotgun.”
“How old are they?”
“Hard to say, but one of the guns is gone.” I picked up a wad of loose paper, then dropped it back on the floor.
“Did I tell you how much I hate guns?” he said. “God, this makes no sense at all. What’s going on here, McKnight? Where is everybody?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
I went back upstairs. Something else was wrong here. Something I couldn’t quite place. Besides the broken window and the empty bottles…
I went through the ground floor rooms again. Nothing seemed out of place until I got to the living room. The sitting room, Natalie had called it. The couch was one of those awful gold things you saw years ago, covered with plastic. The two Queen Anne chairs made you feel like you had to sit up straight with your pinkies extended. There on the floor next to them was a television set, along with a VCR. Beside those was the empty box they had been packed in.
Her mother was here, I thought. She pulled out the TV so her mother could watch a movie or something. It was probably that or drive each other crazy.
And that smell, I thought. That was the thing that was bothering me. Her mother must have smoked, because the faint, stale smell of cigarettes was still lingering in the air. I saw one of Natalie’s salad plates on the floor. It was filled with ashes.
I reached down and picked up an open pack. Virginia Slims, with three cigarettes left.
“Did you find something?” Grant said. He came into the room and looked at the television on the floor.
“Nah, it’s nothing,” I said. But as I put the cigarettes on the plate, I noticed another pack of cigarettes, this one empty and crumpled up, partially tucked underneath the rim of the plate. I picked it up and tried to smooth it out.
“What is it?”
“It’s an empty pack of Camels,” I said. “Unfiltered.”
The look on his face told me everything I needed to know. I stepped up to him and looked him in the eye. It was all I could do not to grab him by the throat.
“These are Marty’s cigarettes, aren’t they,” I said.
“They could be anybody’s,” he said. He took one step backward.
“Anybody’s including Marty, right? These are his brand.”
“Look, McKnight…”
“I’ve seen enough,” I said. “It’s time to call the police.”
I left him standing there. I knew the kitchen phone was dead, but I could still use my cell phone. I went out into the snowstorm, fighting my way back to the truck. I got in, closed the door behind me, and picked up the cell phone. I waited as the stupid thing tried to find a signal-always a problem when the weather was bad, and especially when the phone lines were down and everyone else with a cell phone was using theirs.
I waited. I looked back at the house. Grant was still in there somewhere. I looked out in front of me.
The barn. The door was wide open. The last time I was here, that door was closed.
I got out of the truck and made my way to the barn. As I got closer, I saw that a great drift of snow had formed in the doorway, extending deep inside.
It was slow going, with the snow nearly up to my waist. I worked my way closer and closer.
I got to the doorway. Today there was no sunlight to come streaming through the gaps in the walls. The barn was dark.
I took a few steps in, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
Somewhere, far away, a voice was calling me. “McKnight! Where are you?”
I was about to answer. Then I stopped.
I saw it for one single second without any idea what it was, and then everything else caught up. There was a body on the floor of the barn.
Blood.
A body.
A woman.
Blood all over the hair. Blood everywhere.
Something else. Sticking up out of the floor. No, out of the body. A long wooden stick. No, some sort of tool. A farm tool, sticking out of the body.
The damage. The blood. She was butchered with this thing, this old farm thing made of wood and rusted metal.
This body… This woman…
“McKnight!” The voice again, close behind me now.
I turned and saw him. He stood in the doorway, looking past me at the horror on the ground.
“No,” he said. “God, no. Marty, what did you do? My God, Marty…”
He turned and started to run away, falling into the snow. He left me there alone with her.
I didn’t want to go any closer. But I had to.
I took one step.
Then another.
The hair, spread out around her head. The blade, the long wooden stick, the obscenity of it. I wanted to grab the handle and pull it from her back.
Please, no. Anything but this. Anything.
But wait. I reached down and touched the hair. In the dim light, it looked… red. This wasn’t Natalie. God, it wasn’t her.
I moved around to get a better look at her face. I knew her. I had seen her picture.
It was Natalie’s mother. The Irish looks, the red hair. This was her.
This was Grace, the woman I had never gotten the chance to meet, the woman with all of the lies, each one more fabulous than the last. Until now. She would never tell another lie.
I stood there for a long time, looking at her.
Then there was a sound. I looked up to see Michael Grant standing in the doorway again. This time he had the shotgun in his hands, the double-barreled shotgun from the basement.
He hated guns. I had heard him say that more than once today. He hated guns, but not enough to stop him from doing this right now, leveling it right at my head. Twenty feet away. He moved closer to me.
“No,” I said. “No.”
“I can’t let you leave now.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, McKnight. I’m sorry.”
It came to this, all these years later, since the last time I had looked down the barrel of a gun. Another day, another season, a hot day in Detroit. The feeling was the same.
But this one will be loud. An old shotgun. God in heaven, this will be loud.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He pulled the trigger, and it was all the noise in the world ringing at once, all around me and below me until I reached out to hold it as tight as I could.
Then I let go.