No one would mess with me while I was Bill's girlfriend. Any hands that had patted me in unwanted caresses were kept in their owner's laps, now. And if the person who'd killed my grandmother had killed her because she'd walked in on him while he was waiting for me, he wouldn't get another try at me.
And I could relax with Bill, a luxury so precious I could not put a value on it. My mind could range at will, and I would not learn anything he didn't tell me.
There was that.
It was in this kind of contemplative mood that I came down Bill's steps to my car.
To my amazement, Jason was there sitting in his pickup.
This was not exactly a happy moment. I trudged over to his window.
"I see it's true," he said. He handed me a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the Grabbit Quik. "Get in the truck with me." I climbed in, pleased by the coffee but cautious overall. I put my guard up immediately. It slipped back into place slowly and painfully, like wiggling back into a girdle that was too tight in the first place.
"I can't say nothing," he told me. "Not after the way I lived my life these past few years. As near as I can tell, he's your first, isn't he?" I nodded.
"He treat you good?" I nodded again. "I got something to tell you."
"Okay."
"Uncle Bartlett got killed last night." I stared at him, the steam from the coffee rising between us as I pried the lid off the cup. "He's dead," I said, trying to understand it. I'd worked hard never to think of him, and here I thought of him, and the next thing I heard, he was dead. "Yep."
"Wow." I looked out the window at the rosy light on the horizon. I felt a surge of—freedom. The only one who remembered besides me, the only one who'd enjoyed it, who insisted to the end that I had initiated and continued the sick activities he thought were so gratifying... he was dead. I took a deep breath. "I hope he's in hell," I said. "I hope every time he thinks of what he did to me, a demon pokes him in the butt with a pitchfork."
"God, Sookie!"
"He never messed with you."
"Damn straight!"
"Implying what?"
"Nothing, Sookie! But he never bothered anyone but you that I know of!"
"Bullshit. He molested Aunt Linda, too."
Jason's face went blank with shock. I'd finally gotten through to my brother. "Gran told you that?"
"Yes."
"She never said anything to me."
"Gran knew it was hard for you, not seeing him again when she could tell you loved him. But she couldn't let you be alone with him, because she couldn't be a hundred percent sure girls were all he wanted."
"I've seen him the past couple of years."
"You have?" This was news to me. It would have been news to Gran, too.
"Sookie, he was an old man. He was so sick. He had prostate trouble, and he was feeble, and he had to use a walker."
"That probably slowed him down chasing the five-year-olds."
"Get over it!"
"Right! Like I could!"
We glared at each other over the width of the truck seat.
"So what happened to him?" I asked finally, reluctantly.
"A burglar broke into his house last night."
"Yeah? And?"
"And broke his neck. Threw him down the stairs."
"Okay. So I know. Now I'm going home. I gotta shower and get ready for work."
"That's all you're saying?"
"What else is there to say?"
"Don't want to know about the funeral?"
"No."
"Don't want to know about his will?"
"No."
He threw up his hands. "All right," he said, as if he'd been arguing a point very hard with me and realized that I was intractable.
"What else? Anything?" I asked.
"No. Just your great-uncle dying. I thought that was enough."
"Actually, you're right," I said, opening the truck door and sliding out. "That was enough." I raised my cup to him. "Thanks for the coffee, brother."
it wasn't till I got to work that it clicked.
I was drying a glass and really not thinking about Uncle Bartlett, and suddenly my fingers lost all strength.
"Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea," I said, looking down at the broken slivers of glass at my feet. "Bill had him killed."
I don't KNOW why I was so sure I was right; but I was, the minute the idea crossed my mind. Maybe I had heard Bill dialing the phone when I was half-asleep. Maybe the expression on Bill's face when I'd finished telling him about Uncle Bartlett had rung a silent warning bell.
I wondered if Bill would pay the other vampire in money, or if he'd repay him in kind.
I got through work in a frozen state. I couldn't talk to anyone about what I was thinking, couldn't even say I was sick without someone asking me what was wrong. So I didn't speak at all, I just worked. I tuned out everything except the next order I had to fill. I drove home trying to feel just as frozen, but I had to face facts when I was alone. I freaked out.
I had known, really I had, that Bill certainly had killed a human or two in his long, long, life. When he'd been a young vampire, when he'd needed lots of blood, before he'd gained control of his needs sufficiently to exist on a gulp here, a mouthful there, without actually killing anyone he drank from ... he'd told me himself there'd been a death or two along the way. And he'd killed the Rattrays. But they'd have done me in that night in back of Merlotte's, without a doubt, if Bill hadn't intervened. I was naturally inclined to excuse him those deaths.
How was the murder of Uncle Bartlett different? He'd harmed me, too, dreadfully, made my already difficult childhood a true nightmare. Hadn't I been relieved, even pleased, to hear he'd been found dead? Didn't my horror at Bill's intervention reek of hypocrisy of the worst sort?
Yes. No?
Tired and incredibly confused, I sat on my front steps and waited in the darkness, my arms wrapped around my knees. The crickets were singing in the tall grass when he came, arriving so quietly and quickly I didn't hear him. One minute 1 was alone with the night, and the next, Bill was sitting on the steps beside me.
"What do you want to do tonight, Sookie?" His arm went around me.
"Oh, Bill." My voice was heavy with despair.
His arm dropped. I didn't look up at his face, couldn't have seen it through the darkness, anyway.
"You should not have done it."
He didn't bother with denying it at least.
"I am glad he's dead, Bill. But I can't..."
"Do you think I would ever hurt you, Sookie?" His voice was quiet and rustling, like feet through dry grass.
"No. Oddly enough, I don't think you would hurt me, even if you were really mad at me."
"Then...?"
"It's like dating the Godfather, Bill. I'm scared to say anything around you now. I'm not used to my problems being solved that way."
"I love you."
He'd never said it before, and I might almost have imagined it now, his voice was so low and whispery.
"Do you, Bill?" I didn't raise my face, kept my forehead pressed against my knees.
"Yes, I do."
"Then you have to let my life get lived, Bill, you can't alter it for me."
"You wanted me to alter it when the Rattrays were beating you."
"Point taken. But I can't have you trying to fine-tune my day-to-day life. I'm gonna get mad at people, people are gonna get mad at me. I can't worry about them being killed. I can't live like that, honey. You see what I'm saying?"
"Honey?" he repeated.
"I love you," I said. "I don't know why, but I do. I want to call you all those gooshy words you use when you love someone, no matter how stupid it sounds since you're a vampire. I want to tell you you're my baby, that I'll love you till we're old and gray—though that's not gonna happen. That I know you'll always be true to me—hey, that's not gonna happen either. I keep running up against a brick wall when I try to tell you I love you, Bill." I fell silent. I was all cried out.