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At first, I don’t see anything. Just dirt. Dead leaves. Weeds growing in uneven clusters.
Then I do.
Subtle depressions.
Places where the undergrowth looks different. Too young in some patches. Too sparse in others.
Odd. Usually I’m the one who takes care of these things. Rather, has things taken care of. But this isn’t where I send them.
“How many?” Ella asks.
“I don’t know,” Hazel replies.
I walk forward and drive a shovel into the earth.
“Let me help,” Ella says.
“No,” I tell her. “You’re already tired out from helping me carry the chest. I’ll do this.”
It’s hard work. I’m sweating despite the cold. Dirt cakes beneath my nails, and my shirt clings to my back.
I feel like I’m digging my own way into hell. Here, in my father’s graveyard that I didn’t even know existed.
“How do you know so much about my father’s work?” I finally ask Hazel once I’m nearly done.
Hazel looks down at the ground at the hole opening between us. “This isn’t the time.”
“It’s exactly the time.”
“Nathaniel,” Ella says softly.
I ignore her, focusing on Hazel. “You know where his cameras are. You know his service roads. You know his tunnels. You know his dumping grounds. You know enough to move through this place like you helped build the rot beneath it.”
Hazel flinches.
“So I’m asking once,” I say. “How?”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment, but then she turns to Ella. “Do you remember when I told you I had an affair with a married man when I was younger?”
Ella nods. “Yeah. I remember.”
“The married man I had an affair with,” she says, “was Arthur Vexley.”
I drop my jaw.
Not that I considered my father a paragon of virtue. Hell, I know he fucked around on my mother. But with Hazel? And now…
Fuck.
Now, he still watches her from that hidden monitor in his private office. The one I found by accident. Does Hazel know?
The world shifts, pieces rearranging themselves into something awful.
I step back.
It makes a fucked-up sort of sense.
“He forced you to have an abortion when you got pregnant,” Ella says.
