“Connor, we have things we have to do now.”
“I’m not doing anything with you.”
“We need to take care of this.”
“Take care of what?”
I gesture. “That.”
His expression is perplexed, exasperated. “What are you talking about?”
“We can’t just leave Kylie lying there in the bathroom, Connor.”
He rips away from me, his expression suddenly fierce. “I’m going to call the police.” He looks around. “Where’s the phone?”
“We don’t have one here, baby.”
He looks toward my bag. “You must have a cell phone.”
I take the bag up in my hands hurriedly. “I don’t.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’ve never lied to you, Connor.” Oddly enough, I don’t have a cell phone.
“Let me see. Let me look in your bag.”
“Connor, we have more important things to worry about now. We have to deal with—” I gesture again.
“I’m not dealing with anything. I’m getting out of here.” He moves toward the door.
“Do you have any idea where you are, sweetheart?”
“No. But I’ll find somebody. In another cabin. Or I’ll get back down to the main road.”
“In this downpour? With no light? I think you’ll find that difficult.”
“I don’t care!”
“You’re going to stay here with me, Connor. You’re going to stay here with me and help me clean up this mess, just like the responsible young man you are.”
“Why should I help you?”
“Because you’re my accomplice, sweetheart.”
“Me? You did it!”
“With your help. That’s her pee all over you, Connor.”
“I didn’t do it!”
“The police might think that you did. That you helped me.”
“Why would I do it?”
“Because you wanted it to be just you and me,” I say. “The same thing I want.”
“That’s crazy!”
“They’ll have a lot of evidence against you, sweetheart.”
He shakes his head. “I’m leaving.”
I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but so be it. I pull the gun from the bag, aim it at him.
“Connor, you’re going to help me.”
Oddly, he doesn’t look particularly shocked. Perhaps his face’s capacity for expressing emotion has reached its limit. He just scowls at me.
“We’re going to take care of it, Connor. You and me.”
“How?” he says at last, watching me, watching the gun.
“We have some tools at the back of the house. There’s a shovel. We’re going to dig a hole and put her in it.”
He looks at me for a long time. Then he seems to suddenly deflate. He drops onto the sofa and cries. I move to him, sit next to him.
“Connor,” I say, “I need you to be a man now. I don’t need a little boy. I need a man.”
“But I’m not a man,” he says at last, his voice tight.
“Yes, you are. After what we’ve done together? You’re a man, sweetheart. And I need you to act like one. I need your help. Mona needs your help.”
“I hate you,” he says again, quietly.
I stand again, gun at my side. “Come on, Connor,” I say firmly. “I’ll show you the tools.”
The rain becomes a storm. Lightning, thunder, torrential downpours in the dark. We work from the weak glow of the rear porch lamp and a couple of flashlights. I choose a spot some thirty yards from the back of the house, easy to cover with shrubbery once we’re done. No one ever comes here. No one will know. For a while I stand watching him dig with the gun at my side but after a while I see that he’s accepted that he’s part of this, part of me, I needn’t threaten him anymore. I put the gun in my bag and keep the bag over my shoulder. He digs for a while, and then I do. We switch again and again. It’s backbreaking work. I thought with all the rain it would be relatively easy, but mud is heavy. After an hour we finish a hole maybe three feet deep.
“That’s enough,” I say at last. “Go get her, Connor.”
He’s panting, his face covered in rain. “Me? I can’t.”
“I need you to.”
“I can’t, Mona!”
“Oh, Connor.” I move, every muscle crying out in pain, toward the house, bag over my shoulder. It doesn’t cross my mind that Connor might run while I’m gone. He’s part of this now. He knows he is. In the house I step in, tracking mud everywhere, move to the bathroom, take her by both feet and pull. I can hardly believe how heavy this little girl is. I drag her to the rear of the house, her hands up above her head now, as if she were surrendering to the police in an old film noir. I push backwards through the screen door at the back, step into the rain again, drag her out toward the grave.
Connor cries out suddenly, “Mona! Oh my God!”
“What?”
“Pull up her pants! Pull up her pants, Mona! Oh my God!”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I say, looking at her mud-spattered knees and thighs and privates.
“Please, Mona!”
I can see he’s going to become hysterical, so I lean down and do what I can. It’s almost impossible with a dead body, mud, darkness, rain. A few feet away I can hear Connor vomiting in the bushes.
“There,” I say, standing again. “I did it. Now come on.”
He follows as I drag Kylie to the edge of the muddy hole, pull her partway into it, step around the side to pull her farther along by her arms. Finally she’s in place.
“Get her things from the car, Connor.”
He doesn’t protest this. While he’s gone I move to the bathroom again, look for evidence of her presence. I find none other than the urine everywhere, which we’ll clean before we go.
He returns with Kylie’s things in her little rucksack, a pitiful collection of relics: Kleenex, asthma inhaler, a notebook with unicorns on the cover, pen, pencil stub, gum wrappers, and, of course, a thick fantasy novel. I leave it all in the bag and push the bag down beside her. I can hardly see in this rain, this interminable rain.
“Is that everything?”
He nods. He’s crying.
“Then take the shovel, Connor.”
“Wait,” he says weakly.
“We don’t have time to wait.”
“Wait.”
He steps to the edge of the grave, looks down at the dead girl. Mud is all over her, her body, her shirt, her ruined red-splashed face. Her hair is askew. I can see that he’s thinking of trying to tidy her up. He moves from one side of the grave to the other, running his hands through his drenched hair. At last he steps near her head and takes something from his pocket, crouches down to her.
It’s her glasses. He places them gently onto her pulpy nose and over her ears and then turns away weeping, still crouched, mud covering his pants.
I take the shovel myself and finish the task.
After that Connor is all but useless. He sits on the sofa, arms wrapped around himself, shivering. His eyes are wide, staring at nothing in particular. His breathing seems erratic. He makes little gasping sounds. Sometimes his breathing speeds up for a moment and he starts to cry, big tears running down his drenched face. Then he grows quiet again. I’m left to do everything myself. It takes hours, far longer than I’d imagined. The urine in the bathroom is the worst, taking all the towels we have in the cabin to clean up. I have to run hot water over them in the bathtub, wring them out again and again. Then I have to wipe up the mud we’ve tracked in. There’s a brown path of it leading from the back door to the bathroom. I’m on my knees scrubbing, cleaning. At last I’m as done as I can be and I take the towels and my own clothes and toss them into the washing machine. Naked, I go to Connor and pull off his things. He doesn’t resist. He seems hardly aware that I’m there at all. I lead him to the shower, we wash, I towel us both dry. Then I wrap a blanket around him, push him gently over on the sofa, put a pillow under his head.