someone had died.
When something bad happened, he was the only one who ever knew what to say. Maybe that's the truth of why I do what I do. I want to be like Uncle Micky because he was the only one who could help me when I thought I'd rather crawl in a hole and give up on living. I wanted to be that person for someone else.
When my sister died, Uncle Mickey was one of the only two people who wanted to talk. No one else seemed to get beyond "I'm sorry to hear about Sophie" or "Sophie and Tommy are with God now." And maybe they are. I want to believe that.
"He's going to go too far one of these days," Sophie says.
"Should I ask?" I don't like Darren, but I'm cautious. Everyone who says anything negative about Darren gets kicked out of Sophie's life when she takes him back. My hand tightens on the phone. I want her here where I can see her and protect her.
"I love him."
"Uh huh."
"We just fight so much . . ."
"Sophie? Did something happen?"
My sister pauses long enough that I open my mouth, but then she says, "No. It's okay. He's just . . . upset a lot."
I have come to realize that I couldn’t save her. Sometimes people are beyond our reach. I think about the things I could've done, the things I could've said. Maybe there was nothing. Logic says nothing I do today will bring her back, but every so often, I can't stop thinking about her voice. I hear her voice, and I think about the women the Creeper kills. Did they have sisters they'd call? Do they have kids at home?
Tommy is harder to think about than my sister. My nephew was the only person Darren treated like he was fragile. For all my issues with my brother-in-law, I never doubted that he loved his son. He claims he still does. Hell, he claims he still loves my sister. He writes to me sometimes, long rambling letters that remind me that the human capacity for self-delusion is incredible.
And every once in a while, I am terrified that he's not completely wrong. Some of them I've read and re-read:
Sophie would forgive me. I know she would. Someday I'll be with her again, and she'll tell me. With God's grace, we'll live together in his kingdom with our son. I can't be angry with you, Juliana. Sophie would disapprove. I wish you could understand what happened.
But after a certain point, I asked not to receive them. They are turned over to the police, to Henry. I can't read them anymore. It makes me feel weak to admit that—so only Henry and Uncle Micky know.
I'm not sure why I can handle the grief of mourners or the heartbreak over the women the Creeper has killed, but my own grief is too much to unpack even now. I haven't seen or spoken to my sister's killer since the trial. Sophie’s husband. Tommy’s dad. How do men kill their children? Their partners? How do they do the things that I see written on bodies?
"Jules?"
Uncle Micky is in the room. The little girl in me still looks at him and sees home. My parents are good people, but my uncle's the one who kept me safe.
“Rumors are already starting.” Uncle Micky stands far enough away that I don’t feel crowded.
“About?”
“The body you and the Revill boy—”
I shake my head. “He’s thirty-eight.”
Uncle Micky ignores my attempt to redirect. “Are there things you aren’t telling me, Jules?”
If I listed all the things I hid, we’d be in this stand-off a while. I walk over and wrap my arms around my uncle. It’s not exactly an answer, but for a moment, I want to be a small child, safe from the monsters in the world. I used to think that the bad things were the stuff of stories, and I believed that things that go bump in the night skittered away when the lights cut on.
Then my brother-in-law murdered my sister and my nephew.
Then a killer started leaving bodies at my doorstep.
The world is full of monsters, not make-believe ones, but flesh and blood men who target women. The two men are not connected. They aren’t connected to other men like them either. I’m well aware that there is no great conspiracy. It’s not that complicated.
Some men simply like the power they can have over others.
At the end of the day, that’s why Darren writes