Page 54

“Where have you been, Jimmy?” she asks him, then flashes the same pretty smile Aunt Judy has though rarely ever wears. “I’ve missed you.”

“Grace,” he whispers, even though he knows this cannot be his youngest cousin. It’s been years since she visited him like this, years since that very first time she came knocking on his door sometime around midnight, pleading, crying to be let inside. He thought he was finally free once he started hanging iron around the length of his house, thought if he kept the visits to himself that maybe it would all fade into a numb nothing, into some fucked-up sixth stage of grief.

“Jimmy,” she says, so softly he almost cries. “Jimmy, what happened? What did you do?”

Jim studies her reflection, trying to find the imperfection that might swiftly shatter the illusion, but his mind is far too heavy with alcohol and fear. “No,” he mutters, wiping at his eyes again. “I know that’s not you, Grace. It can’t be.”

Her blue eyes fill up with tears. “You wouldn’t come get me that night,” she says, staring back at him with a despair that begs to suffocate. “I needed you, Jimmy. I needed you, and you just left me out in the dark to die.”

She cries harder, until her slender shoulders begin to tremble against the night. “Why would you let me die, Jim?” she asks, as a curtain of blond hair falls in her face. “Why wouldn’t you help me? Why wouldn’t you bring me home?”

Jim shakes his head, slapping his cheeks a few times. “No. You’re not her,” he says, just as she lets out another gut-wrenching sob. He forces his gaze to the ground, eyeing the blood-soaked table cover that is hiding Billy. “You’re not her,” he repeats firmly, though his throat feels like it’s on fire, constricting tighter and tighter.

“You did the same thing to Billy,” she whispers, sniffling around the words. “Why would you do that to him, Jimmy? He was your family. He was your family, and you just killed him—”

“Stop it.”

“Say what you did to him,” she says, nailing him in place with her stare. “Say what you did to Billy.”

“I said stop it,” Jim hisses, ripping his hands back through his hair.

She bangs a fist against the glass, cracking it. “You pulled him in front of you!” she snaps. “You let that monster have him, because you know that you’re guilty! You’re guilty, just like Thomas said! You let Billy die, just like you let me die.” She bangs her fist again, splintering the glass further. “Say it, Jimmy!”

“I didn’t mean to!” Jim screams, nearly choking on the words as he doubles over. He squeezes his eyes shut, but it’s all still there, burned into his mind like raging hellfire—the bright, frantic fear on Billy’s face, the sharp, shocked gasp as he was yanked into the Mimic’s path by hands made of the same flesh and blood.

Grace is weeping again, louder and louder, until Jim covers his ears and presses his face into the tops of his knees, rocking back and forth. He doesn’t move from that position for several minutes, instead only focusing on the sound of his racketing heart pounding within his ears.

Once it has returned to a more normal rhythm, he removes his hands to the sound of silence. He exhales shakily, wiping the slick sweat from his forehead and readjusting his baseball cap. When he peers back up again, it is Billy who is standing beyond the door.

Jim stares back at his cousin silently—his brother, in all the ways that counted. The Mimic says nothing from within this body; the simple act of being while the real Billy rests only feet away is punishment enough.

A sob catches in Jim’s throat then, one he’s felt lodged there since he was twelve years old. It is a permanent pain, growing from the very core of him like weeds that refuse to die.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” he whispers.

He slides backward until he is sitting with his back against the base of the nearest aisle shelves. The shotgun is cold in his hands as he stares outside at some version of Billy encased in a welcoming, inevitable night.

I’m sorry.

Jim raises his eyes toward the bright overhead lights, white and shining like his mother always described heaven to be.

He places the head of the barrel beneath his chin.

Twenty

she climbed all day

Kimi’s office smells of blood and day-old coffee. Thomas eyes the small lamplit space, halting in front of a framed picture that hangs on the far wall, just beneath a string of multicolored Christmas lights. The woman in the photo appears to be in her fifties, with long graying hair and the same dark gaze as the young child standing next to her. Behind them is the brick exterior of Blackwell’s Country Store, though the painted sign out front looks brand new.

Another framed photo is hung next to it. This one is a headshot of a teenage girl, around the same age as Jane, he’d guess. The girl is the sort of pretty that would cause anyone to do a double take, with an eager shine to her eyes that’s immediately captivating. Thomas squints to see a swooping signature in the corner of the photo, along with the note “To my biggest fan.”

Kimi pauses beside him. Her eyes drift over the photo for only a moment before she clears her throat. “We should come up with a plan,” she says.

Thomas nods stiffly, shifting to sit down in a rolling chair. With four of them in here, the office feels cramped and near suffocating, so he focuses his attention on how his sister carefully places a gauzy bandage against Ashley’s collarbone, taking instruction from the nurse with gentle touches and small, polite nods.

They locked you in here, he wants to remind Jane. They practically left you to die.

Even though Kimi chose to join them and part ways with Jim, Thomas clings to the uneasiness her and Ashley’s presence stirs within him. He can’t trust either of them, not entirely—not after their earlier actions with Jane and Jackson. But he also knows that admitting this out loud would do nothing but fray everyone’s nerves further, and frayed nerves seem to be exactly what the Mimic feeds off of.