Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Tucholke April Genevieve

Author:Tucholke, April Genevieve [Tucholke, April Genevieve]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-08-14T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

LUKE CAME HOME first.

“Daniel Leap,” he said, and threw himself down on the couch beside me. Dust motes flew up and swirled around in the last bits of the day’s sunlight coming through the kitchen window. “Damn. And you saw the whole gory thing, out the damn pizzeria window. How are you doing, sis?”

I just shook my head. Luke didn’t know the half of it.

Luke sighed. “He’s been our town drunk for as long as I can remember. God, I hated the way he would scream at us . . . but still. He was almost an Echo landmark.” Luke slouched down into the couch and crossed his arms. “Wonder what finally pushed him over the edge?”

“He was Jack’s pa,” I whispered. “Daniel Leap. That was his father. River and I met him this morning.”

Luke rose out of his slouch. “Fuck.”

“Exactly.” I paused. “I brought Jack home with me. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just leave him in his house all alone, waiting for a government official to show up and toss him in some godforsaken facility. So I put him in the green guestroom.”

Luke leaned over me suddenly, and gave me a hug. I didn’t know what to do at first. But eventually my arms floated up on their own and hugged him back.

“Our father’s an ass,” he said, letting me go, “who ran off to Europe and never calls or even sends postcards. But at least he didn’t kill himself in the town square.” Luke let out another little sigh, and his shoulders slumped forward.

I gave my brother a sad kind of smile.

He smiled the same sad smile back, and it was so different from his usual arrogant grin that he barely seemed the same person.

Luke got up, went to the fridge, pulled out the iced tea, and poured both of us a glass. Then he sat back down on the couch. “What’s going on with the world lately? Devils, kids in cemeteries, witch burnings, drunk men suiciding themselves in the town square. Are we living in the end- times, sis? Is the Apocalypse nigh?”

Luke took a long drink of tea and shook his head. “Like I said last night, it all started when River got here. Which could be a coincidence, like most things in life. But what are the odds that a man kills himself in the center of town, and you have a front-row seat when he does it, and the suicider’s kid was hanging out with you in the attic the day before? God. I’m not going to get the image of his bloody shirt out of my head, not for years.”

I shivered. The shiveriest sort of shiver, the kind that starts in your heart and spreads down your legs, all the way into your toes.

What was making me shiver, though, wasn’t the image of Daniel Leap’s bloody shirt, or the gaping slit in his throat. It was River, looking eager as Daniel raised the razor to his neck.

The last of the light slipped from the window.

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