He stops for a breath, and then lets go of me.
“I’m so sorry, Poe. When you came back, and everything made sense, I should have told you. But by then, Ralph was dead and I wasn’t sure—I didn’t know what the right answer was until Saint found her bones, and even then I wasn’t sure what possible good it could do to tell you. That night has haunted me for twelve years. I didn’t want it to haunt you too.”
“It already does,” I say, and I close my eyes tight for a minute, wishing I could squeeze out the last ten minutes like I can squeeze out the light.
But I can’t. It’s there now, it’s already catalyzed, it’s already burned into my memory like an acid etch.
Becket saw Ralph burying someone that Samhain night. That someone was my mother.
Ralph killed my mother.
God. Why? Why?
“Tha
