The Truth About Night Read online

  “Get him,” the one on the right barked.

  My arm was released as the second man left. I seized in a breath and choked on blood running down my throat. I blinked a few times, trying to see anything. What was happening to Ethan. What this thing was doing to me. I tried to pull away from the fingers wrapped like tourniquets around my arm.

  The man on my back dug his knee into my shoulder as he continued furiously shoving the arm of my coat up as far as the wool would allow, then ripping my sleeve. His breathing quick and labored, he grabbed my forearm and fire sliced into my flesh,

  I cried out and the attacker delivered a sharp punch to my kidneys and I knew I was out. A gasp leapt from me as paralyzing pain seized my body again.

  I heard the staccato sounds of fists meeting flesh, echoed by grunts of pain and exertion. Ethan was fighting, taking out all the others. He would save us.

  Then it all went silent.

  The men, the shadows, the thing holding me down, vanished as quickly as they had appeared and I was left, sputtering for air on the cold tile.

  As soon as I could manage a lungful of air, I called out Ethan’s name.

  A groan was my only response.

  My left arm gained feeling first, and I pushed myself up from the ground.

  Light slowly returned to the abandoned space. I had to blink a few times as the world came into focus. The first thing to take shape was a puddle of my blood on the white tile where my face had been. I curled my legs to me. They worked, but my side was tender. My head still spinning, I frantically searched to find Ethan.

  He was sprawled on the ground not ten feet away at the front of the store. It felt like ten miles as I dragged myself across the floor.

  Blood was everywhere, on the floor, on him, like thick crude oil in the low light, the scent of pennies replacing dust.

  “Ethan?”

  He hissed out something. I leaned over him to find a stream of blood flowing from his throat. Or where his throat should have been. A long gash ran from his ear down to his chest, and blood flowed out in waves.

  As quickly as I could, I wrapped his wool scarf around his throat and put his head on my leg. My right hand seemed to be the better working one as I called 9-1-1. I gave the dispatcher my location and didn’t bother with her instructions to stay calm. I threw the damn thing across the floor and began a chant I’d heard before.

  “Just hold on, Ethan. Hold on.”

  I kept my hand pressed against the wound, but nothing in triage class could have prepared me for this. Bullet wounds I could handle. But this? No amount of gauze was going to fix this trench of gore down his neck. I wasn’t even sure there was enough neck to fix.

  The truth of the situation seeped into me as I held him, brushed a curl from his forehead, matched his short, panted breaths with my own. Ethan was going to die. I knew it from the odd angle of his head as he looked up at me, the way his eyes couldn’t seem to focus on mine.

  I bit back the sob forming deep within my chest.

  Ethan smiled up at me, his teeth bloody. “You’re not going … to cry on me, are you … Lanard?” His deep voice was no more than a whisper between us.

  “Contrary to what they say, I do have a heart.” I didn’t know if the cool streak on my cheek was a tear or blood.

  “Tell Piper … I’m sorry,” he bubbled.

  There were a million things that I needed to say, needed to tell him, but my brain stalled at the unknown name on his lips.

  “Take this.”

  His bloody, shaking hand grasped at his shirt and I had to help him find the silver medallion around his neck. He didn’t have the strength to break the chain, but he pressed the pendant into my palm and curled my fingers around it.

  “Let Emily know … I loved her.”

  His last breath caught half-formed in his throat, and I felt him die. His body went limp in my arms, and the warmth of him slipped away until he was nothing.

  Ethan’s funeral was that Saturday. I must have stood in front of my closet for an hour. Just standing there in my towel. My entire wardrobe was comprised of jeans and boots and comfort. It was the wardrobe of someone who jumped fences and skulked around at night. Nothing was right for where I was going in full daylight.

  Finally, in the back, I found a short black satin dress my mother had bought me for a cousin’s wedding. I didn’t think it would fit anymore and was surprised at how roomy it was after I zipped it up. I found a pair of black tights, no idea where those came from, and tried to fasten my only pair of black heels.

  My hand shook as I worked at the buckle. It could have been the three cups of coffee I’d had that day to keep me warm, but I knew the truth was simpler than that. That’s the nice thing about the truth: it’s mostly simple and straightforward. And when you happen to be a girl almost entirely composed of the stuff, when truth drives every fiber of your being, it’s easy to know exactly what is really going on in your head. I was lost. My right leg was gone and I’d been limping around in circles.

  I’d burned out. I’d been chasing leads for three days straight. Talking to people I knew, paying off people I didn’t. Trying to dig as hard as I could as fast as I could to find Benny before the trail ran cold. He’d disappeared; it was like he hadn’t even existed. But he wasn’t dead yet—the assistant at the ME’s office confirmed that.

  Three days and I had nothing, except a wicked hangover and sore knuckles from knocking on doors. The life seemed to have drained out of me, and I was hollow as I stared at my reflection in the mirror. I wasn’t able to cover my black eye or the busted lip with makeup. I wore my hair down to cover the gash on my forehead and the finger-shaped bruises around my throat. My black cardigan worked fine to cover the bandage still on my right arm.

  I held on to Ethan’s medallion dangling from my neck, and must have stared into the mirror for another twenty minutes before Hayne rang the buzzer. I dropped the silver chain down the front of my dress and left.

  He didn’t say anything as we drove. I think he was in the same headspace as me. My brain remained eerily quiet, and there was a ringing in my ears, like I’d been to a rock concert. Maybe it was always there, and I’d never stopped long enough to notice it. I noticed it now. Maybe this is what failure sounded like.

  I’d been too far too many funerals. But this one was more like the first, my father’s. I’d ridden in the town car provided for my family that rainy morning and the distance between my mother and me on that leather seat had felt like miles. It hadn’t gotten any shorter in the years since.

  At the cemetery, we made our way slowly from the graveled parking area, up the hill to where two sections of rowed white chairs stood against the almost too green turf laid out.

  Hayne guided me down the middle aisle of the seats, passed the rest of the staff from the newspaper, his hands hovering at my shoulder and elbow. The ringing in my head muffled the kind words of other reporters as I walked through their ranks.

  It was my father’s funeral all over again. Near strangers giving me condolences that I wasn’t sure I’d earned.

  Dot had saved us a few seats in the front section, a strange understood place of honor for the editor-in-chief. The white folding chair wobbled under the weight of my still packed and ready-to-go messenger bag.

  “I’m sorry,” Dot said as she sat in the wooden chair beside me. Hayne’s daughter was eight years younger than me, and looked up to me like a big sister, though today of all days, I wasn’t sure I deserved that.

  Ethan deserved that, I didn’t. I’d lied to him. I’d promised he’d get home at a normal time, and now he was never going home.

  “I couldn’t believe it when Dad told me you were actually upholding the HR violence moratorium and hadn’t been at work.”

  I took a moment to appreciate that Hayne was covering for me. Telling lies in my stead. “Yeah, well, even ace reporters have to let broken ribs heal.”

  “Geez, Merci,” she said. “Dad said the cops stopped by but they didn’t have
any leads?”

  Hayne cleared his throat and put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Leave her be, honey.”

  Dot pressed her lips together quickly, stopping the barrage of curiosity I knew came naturally to her.

  Before I could say anything further, a figure blocked out the sun. At least it was sunny today, and on the warm side. I hadn’t brought a scarf with me.

  “Merci Lanard?” he asked.

  I had to shield my eyes from the bright light behind him. The man was tall, as tall as Ethan had been. His dark curls did nothing to soften his angular features, and the casual hair stood out in sharp contrast to the black suit. My gaze fell to the white rose in his long fingers.

  “I’m Emily’s brother, Levi. She was wondering if you’d like to dedicate a flower during the service.”

  I swallowed as I searched for Emily. Her tall frame was standing in the front row surrounded by sorrowful faces and wrapped in comforting arms. God, Emily. What was I going to say to her? Hallmark hadn’t made an I’m sorry I got your husband killed card. I had been unconscious in the ER when she had come to identify the body. So today was the first time I’d seen her since she, Ethan, and I had birthday tacos a few weeks ago. Had it only been a few weeks? That seemed like another life. One where Ethan was alive and we were laughing. Not this new sudden existence where he was dead and she was so far away.

  Levi offered me the white rose. I stood and my hand shook as I took the long stem.

  “You can stand in the front. He always did think of you as family.”

  As if this entire day wasn’t going to be painful enough, the truth sliced into me like a razor. I was now alone. The one person I had to rely upon, to trust, was now gone, and I was alone. My constant who I’d talked to every day for two years, had holiday meals with, bought birthday presents for was gone, and I was alone.

  Today of all days, I had been wishing that one fact might stay away, might remain in the numbness, in that hum in the back of my brain.

  Levi escorted me to the end of a row of black-clad people also holding white roses. Just as I found my footing next to him, the pallbearers brought out the casket from the back of the hearse. I had seen the car sitting there, its sleek black finish gleaming in the unusually warm November morning. But it wasn’t until six men pulled the mahogany casket from the back of the car that the thought occurred to me: his body had been there the whole time. Like he’d been listening to us, still with me as I stood there in uncomfortable heels. Like he was still there mocking me.

  Whatcha all dressed up for, Lanard?

  The thought hit me like a punch to the stomach, and I flinched.

  A hand landed on my shoulder. My heart leapt. For an instant, the world went black again, and I was seized by a million hands on that cold, hard floor. I gasped and flung my arm at the assailant.

  My forearm connected with something real, and with the connection, the spell was broken.

  My vision returned to the present, and I found Levi putting his hands up between us. “You okay?” he asked.

  I took in a few deep breaths to keep my heart from lodging in my throat. “No.” I didn’t lie. Couldn’t lie. Not here. Not in front of Ethan.

  My heart was still racing when the men carried him past me. As much as I wanted to, I resisted reaching out to touch it. I knew the truth. Ethan wasn’t there. What made Ethan special was not trapped in the box. What made Ethan Ethan had slipped out of him that night.

  A white handkerchief appeared to my right. It took me a moment to reorient myself to the present, rather than the past and pain.

  “You’ve hurt yourself.” I heard the concern in Levi’s voice.

  A rose thorn had pierced my palm.

  I took the bit of white and pressed it against my hand. What was I going to do without Ethan? Even now I needed the Band-Aids he always carried around, the first aid kit he always had stocked with alcohol wipes, latex gloves, and more supplies than an entire Boy Scout troop put together. How many times had he patched me up? How many times had I patched him up?

  I wondered if that was a family thing. Was everyone in his family so prepared, or was it specific to Ethan? I inspected the line of people with white roses, and none of their faces were familiar. Why were they not familiar? Why hadn’t I asked more about him? His family? Why was our relationship primarily based around our work?

  Ethan’s loved ones were called forward to put the roses on the casket. I barely heard the minister. I was taking in everything about the people standing with me, and fresh questions began filling my brain. How did Ethan manage to keep these six people holding white roses a secret? Two years working together. Why didn’t he speak more about them? How had he managed to keep it all in? Especially with a person like me sitting next to him for two years. A person whose job it was to pull out the darkest sins from people.

  Correction: Had I ever even asked?

  I followed the line of people to the side of his casket, my movements more automatic than intentional. Tension rolled across my shoulders. As my turn came at the side of the casket, I squeezed the rose too tightly, and again, the thorns pierced the soft mound of my palm.

  I made another promise to him, one that I would never break.

  I will find them, Ethan. I will find your killers, and they will not hurt anyone ever again.

  I placed my rose on the top of all the others, and I walked back to my spot in front. I paused before Emily and ready to say something, anything. Her brown eyes were red, the tip of her nose shiny where she had already wiped off her makeup. I searched for the right words, but all I had in the moment were the cadre of limping apologizes and trite condolences. Nothing truly conveyed exactly how I felt for what had happened to her husband. The apologies I needed to make for the late nights and the missed dinners. That, of all the people here, we might be sharing the same severed leg feeling.

  I just sighed and kept walking back to my chair at the end of the row.

  The service concluded, and I watched, still as a headstone, as they lowered his casket into the ground, my blood-covered rose on the top.

  It wasn’t until Emily walked away, her arm wrapped around a tall blonde woman, and the crowd began to disperse that I realized I’d stopped breathing, as if seeing if I could survive under the ground, if we could switch places.

  I sat back down on one of the chairs, my energy draining into the earth, the questions settling for a moment, the muffled silence returning, as I felt him leave me again.

  This was it. Ethan was gone. He wasn’t coming back. Just like Dad never came back. It was just me. Abandoned again.

  I heard the sounds of a scuffle, and I looked up from the hole in the ground to see Emily’s brother glaring down at a man half a head shorter than him. The strange man’s eyes were fierce and his face flushed. Their voices were nothing more than growls and gravel on the wind.

  Where there is family, there is drama. Or at least, that is what I’d been told. This wasn’t my fight. Let these strangers handle it themselves.

  I pushed myself up from the wooden chair and walked to the parking lot. Hayne, Dot, and the rest of the staff were waiting for me when I finally made it to his car.

  Dot fussed over my hand, taking the white handkerchief and inspecting my palm. She held it tightly until she was sure that it wasn’t going to bleed anymore, prattling on about a new literature professor she had who was completely dreamy, as if thoughts of a cute boy could help distract me from today. She was too good for this world.

  Hayne’s brow had been furrowed when he’d picked me up that morning, and the furrow hadn’t smoothed out yet. “We’re going over to McTaggert’s.”

  “I thought Irish wakes were the night before the funeral.”

  “Shut up and get in the car, Lanard.”

  As I read the others, I knew the truth. Just like they had rallied in the newsroom, they were rallying at our favorite bar because they didn’t want to be alone any more than I did.

  Hayne walked me to the passenger
side and opened my door.

  “She’s lying!”

  The words echoed across the parking lot, and everyone turned. They turned because it was a show; it was a spectacle at a funeral. It distracted people from their loss and own sense of mortality.

  I turned around because this voice felt like someone sliding a blanket across my skin. The static in my brain rose to greet this new sensation, as did the hairs on the back of my neck.

  The man I’d seen fighting with Levi stormed across the parking lot straight toward me. Hayne tried to step between us, but I restrained him with an outstretched hand. I’d never hidden behind Hayne before, I wasn’t about to start now. I would face him as I faced all threats, head on.

  When he stopped before me, my skin singed under his teal-blue eyes and the anger that poured off of him. He glared at me, the arch of his eyebrow giving a wicked articulation to a presence that felt bigger than his body. Who was he? What were he and Levi fighting about? Why had he called me a liar? The questions started circling around in my brain and the sizzle to answer them was like Frankenstein’s monster being brought back to life.

  “You’re lying about what happened that night.”

  My body reanimated with the new electricity running through it. I took my time with my answer as I collected details. The who’s and what’s of the situation. Accent was Scottish. Couldn’t be family. He was smaller than Ethan. The suit was new from the smell of it. And, seriously, those eyes were as deep as an ocean trench.

  “I never lie about anything,” I answered, keeping my voice steady and my nerves calm.

  He thrust his finger at me. “You got him killed.”

  Oh, the game was on now. A smile played across my lips as the current danced around my head, tingling and tightening the hairs at the nape of my neck, “You really want to do this here?”

  “Yes. Here.” His glare deepened. “I need to know.”

  It was comforting to feel the familiar chill down my spine as I slipped into interrogation mode.

  “Did you see the initial police report?” I asked.

  “It was a load of shite.”