She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,245

finally understood, her gift graciously shared with him.

He broke from her hand and backed away in complete silence as Cammie and my father stood, his spell on them broken. He tried to tell them to get back down, silently mouthing the words, but this did nothing.

David Pickford ran.

We watched him run toward the gully and disappear into the trees on the opposite side. All of us too exhausted to give chase.

The train whistle broke through the silence, much closer now.

I turned back to Stella in time to see her get to her feet. She too began to back away, she too mouthed silent words as tears streamed down her face, “I’m sorry, Jack. I’m so sorry. I love you, I always have, please know that.”

How she found the energy.

Where she found the energy, I may never know.

Stella ran toward the train tracks.

I ran after her, the muscles in my legs screaming as I pushed them harder than any other moment in my life. I closed the gap, but Stella still reached the train tracks before me. As I neared, she bent forward with both hands on her knees, openly crying, violent sobs shaking every bit of her.

If those first raindrops had only been exploratory, the ones to follow next came with purpose—thick, cold, heavy, drenching drops.

The train whistle blew again. The freight liner was barreling down on us, a single bright headlight slicing the night.

Stella stood in the center of the tracks, her wet hair covering half her face as she turned to me. “It was him, Jack! Oh God, please believe me. It was David, things he told me so long ago. I couldn’t stop myself. I so desperately wanted to, but I couldn’t, and I was so far gone—like the lake, but much worse than the lake—once it started, I couldn’t pull it back. I tried, Jack. Please believe me. You of all people need to know I tried.” She looked out over the grounds of Carrie Furnace, at the blackened fields and spent concrete, at the building beyond, knowing nothing escaped her hunger, all life depleted. “Oh God, I killed them all, didn’t I? Every one of them!” She bent over again.

I stepped over the railroad tie and went to her. I placed my palm on her back. I told her my father, Preacher, Cammie, and Darby were still alive. I told her David ran.

“He can’t hurt you, me, or anyone else anymore. It’s all over.”

She didn’t hear this, the guilt overwhelming.

“I didn’t mean to, Jack. I didn’t. I told you I’d never do it again and didn’t want to, but David—” she broke off as the train whistle cut through the night again. Close now.

Stella stood up, looked toward the train, then turned to me. “I need to die, Jack. Then it will all be over. I’m worse than David, I’m a monster. I bring nothing but death, to every single thing I touch. I can’t live with that, not anymore. I can’t do it again, not in another year, not ever. I was prepared to die, I need to die. Tonight. Now.”

The train whistle again. The conductor no doubt able to see us now, directly in his path.

Loud, the whistle.

“I love you, Jack, I will always love you. Please forgive me. Please remember me. Please—”

Both my gloves were gone, lost on the ground somewhere back near my father and the others.

I pulled Stella close.

I placed both bare hands on either side of her face.

I kissed her.

And Stella Nettleton kissed me back.

PART 6

“You have been in every line I have ever read.”

― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

August 8, 2010

Thirty-Four Years Old

1

“Read.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Read.”

“You make me read it every year.”

I tapped a finger against the dark granite and cleared my throat.

He rolled his eyes. “Josephine “Jo” Gargery. March 12, 1956 to April 28, 1993. Sister, Aunt, Friend.”

He frowned, as he did every other year, and looked over at me. “Didn’t you say her middle name was Laura?”

“It was.”

“Then why does it say Jo?”

“That’s what everyone called her.”

“Huh. That’s a boy’s name.”

I smiled at this. He said the same thing last year, too. “She was a tough woman.”

“And she raised you?”

“By hand, yeah. All by herself.”

“After your mommy and daddy died?”

I nodded.

He sat Indian style on the soft grass, and he shifted his weight to the gravestone on Jo’s left. “That’s your momma?”

A little moss had taken hold in the lettering. We missed it when we first got here. I scraped it away with my fingernail. “Kaitlyn Gargery Thatch.