“I understand. Really, I do. I know exactly how you feel. But this isn’t the answer, Jay. Put down the gun. Put it on the ice, and walk toward me.”
Jay didn’t do what I said. Instead, he pushed the barrel harder into his head, and I flinched. I put up my hands and took a few more steps. The snow swirled, and the wind roared. I blinked as ice balls gathered on my eyelids. Under my feet, I could hear the thump of the water pushing like a body against the ice, trying to get free. I felt as if we were surrounded by the dead, all the ones who’d come before us. They came and went in the white cloud, ghosts pointing their crooked fingers at me. I felt a sickness in my stomach.
“Gordon hated me,” Jay said. He still couldn’t call him his father.
“No, he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t understand you, but fathers don’t hate their sons.”
“He hated me, and I hated him.”
“Don’t do this to yourself,” I told him. “Let me get you help. Put down the gun, and let’s get out of here.”
Jay shook his head. “I’m done.”
“You’re not. No way are you done. You are seventeen years old, and you have the rest of your life ahead of you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I want to confess. You’re a cop, right? I want to confess.”
“Confess to what?”
“I killed Gordon,” Jay said.
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did. It was me.” He jabbed a finger at Ben Malloy, who’d emerged from the trees and was standing by the lakeshore. “You! Do you hear me? Do you hear what I’m saying? I killed him! I killed Gordon Brink! Me and nobody else! I cut the bastard into little pieces. I sliced him up and watched him bleed to death. You’re looking for the beast that did it? The monster? That’s me!”
“Jay,” I begged him. “No! What are you doing?”
“I am the Ursulina!” he bellowed.
“Stop it! You’re not!”
“Will lied!” he shouted at us. “He wanted to protect me. Will’s not gay. I am. We were friends, that’s all. Tell everybody! It was a mistake! He lied because he didn’t want to see me go to prison. He made up the whole story. He sacrificed himself for a lie. We weren’t together out here. Nothing happened between us. I came on to him, and he rejected me. Tell them! I was home on Sunday night. I had a huge fight with Gordon, and I went down to the office to confront him. I hit him, and then I cut him up. Do you hear me? I used the book, and I made it look just like the others. It was me!”
“Jay, don’t.” I was crying. I wanted to fall to my knees. “Don’t do this!”
His voice grew calm, and the calm was worse than everything else. It was the calm of someone who’d made his decision. “Please tell them. Save Will. Give him his life back.”
“Jay!”
The boy’s finger slid over the trigger. Time stood still. I ran, but I was too far away to do anything. I screamed at him, but in the next instant, he fired. The wind picked that moment to wail like a banshee, and I could barely hear the noise of the gun at all. The only way I knew that Jay was dead was that his body collapsed to the ice right in front of me.
Chapter Nineteen
My fault, sweetheart.
This was my fault. Will was in the hospital, and Jay was dead. Two sweet teenage boys, one life ruined, one life over. I wasn’t able to stop it.
All I can tell you is that I had a breakdown. I didn’t want to be who I was anymore. Staring at Jay’s body on the ice, the red blood from his head already freezing hard against white snow, I realized that I wanted to get away from everything around me. Leave it all behind. The deaths, the abuse, the loneliness, the failures, the specter of the Ursulina. The monster in the woods had obsessed me for too long.
I knew I had duties to perform. I was a sheriff’s deputy, and a boy was dead. There were calls to be made, evidence to be gathered, reports to be written, laws and procedures to be followed. I did none of those things. What I did was leave the scene in a kind of daze. Ben Malloy, who was in shock at what had happened in front of him, pestered me with questions, but I said nothing. I was numb, overwhelmed, unable to function. With my flashlight, I followed the trail all the way back to Norm’s trailer. I went to my cruiser, and I got inside and drove away, leaving Ben shouting in frustration at me.
That depression I told you about?
It fell down on me from the sky; it enveloped me like the snow. The gun in my brain that blasted away everything I loved, everything I cared about, everything that had any meaning, made a slow, inexorable turn, until its smoking black barrel was pointed at my face. I felt completely and utterly empty, a shell, with nothing to live for, no happiness, no joy. I’d added nothing to this world with my existence. Drop Rebecca Colder in the lake, and her body would sink with no ripples.
There was no question in my mind about what I should do. I was going to end it. That was my plan; that was all I could think about. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was where to go. Where to walk in those final moments. Where to draw my gun and place it in my mouth. I wondered what last image my eyes should have, before the whiteness of the snow became the blackness and nothingness of death.
I drove along the snowy highway, studying each crossroad and wondering which one had a sign that read: This way, Rebecca. Half a dozen times, I stopped, contemplating whether to turn the wheel. If you’re planning to kill yourself, one place really is as good as any other. But each time, I kept going. I guess life takes you where you’re supposed to be, for better or worse.
It was an owl that saved me.
An owl is why you’re here in this world, sweetheart.
I squinted through the slush on my windshield, and suddenly, there it was, face in front of me, wings spread like Jesus on the cross. The car hit the owl, or the owl hit the car, and then it was gone, rising in the air, going up and down drunkenly as if it was struggling to soar. I screeched to a stop on the shoulder and bolted from the car, scanning the woods for the bird. The owl had vanished, but its cry called to me, guided me. I ran toward the sound and found a break in the trees, near the entrance road to a national forest campground that was closed for the season.
Somewhere down there, the owl beckoned me with its call.
This way, Rebecca.
The snow came up to my knees. I couldn’t walk or run; it was as if I swam through it, which left me breathless. The entrance road took me to a clearing near the lake. The same huge lake that made a kind of sunflower in the middle of the forest, with rounded inlets like petals, which was how it got its name. The lake continued past the spot where Ben Malloy had seen the Ursulina; it flowed into deep water at its core where the winter ice was thin; and it extended all the way to the place where I’d stood and watched the monster’s moon, and where I’d just seen Jay Brink put a bullet in his head.
Do you believe in signs, sweetheart?
The owl led me to this lake. It led me to what I was destined to find, because when I got there, I discovered that I wasn’t alone. There was a pickup truck parked by the shore, practically buried in snow. It wasn’t going anywhere. And from the steamed-over windows, I realized that the truck wasn’t empty. Someone needed my help.
I had a purpose in life again.
I shouldered my way through the drifts and tapped on the driver’s window. When the window rolled down, I found myself staring at a young man only a few years older than me, no more than thirty, who looked ready to freeze to death. He had no coat; he was actually wearing a short-sleeved shirt. In January! He was a strong, strapping man, with a thick mane of slightly curly brown hair and a perfectly trimmed brown beard. His face, like mine, had a sadness about it, but I couldn’t help but notice how handsome he was.