Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power

Author:Rory Power [Rory Power]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2020-07-06T18:30:00+00:00

fifteen

officer Connors is standing in the doorway, watching me with raised eyebrows. My heart thunders, breath catching. I knew this could happen. I broke the door down because I didn’t care. But he can’t take me away now. Not when I’ve finally figured out the right questions to ask. What happened to Katherine? Maybe she left a daughter behind, not Mom.

“Shit,” I say. “I…” There’s no way to get out of this, though. Papers are still scattered around me, one box still open.

“You’ve been in town two days and been in trouble as many times,” he says, coming farther in. “Should I expect Tess to jump out of the shadows?”

Tess. I forgot. She must be somewhere else in the basement. I hope she hears him, stays far away. There’s no reason for both of us to get caught.

“I just needed to check something,” I say, which sounds ridiculous. Connors obviously thinks so too. He huffs out a laugh and crouches next to me, picking up one of the stacks of paper and flipping through it. Over his shoulder, Tess peers around the doorframe. When she sees he isn’t looking, she meets my eyes and tiptoes past toward the stairwell door, holding up crossed fingers and mouthing “Good luck.”

She’ll sneak out the back and step into the sun and everything will be the same for her as it was when we got here. And I’m here sitting in a whole new set of ruins. A cousin, maybe, and an aunt, and both of them gone before I ever had a chance to know them. If Katherine’s anything like Mom, then nothing could bring her back here. Maybe that girl felt the same pull I did. Maybe she came looking, and Gram hasn’t been keeping her hidden at all.

“So,” Connors says. “This old chestnut.”

“What?” He sounds so casual about this, this thing that’s upending every part of me. More family than just the line from Gram to Mom to me. It could have been like those pictures at Fairhaven. Branches and roots both.

Connors ignores my surprise, and the flash of anger I can’t put out. “We’ve been looking at this too,” he says, and he starts piling everything back into the open box. Calmly, like it doesn’t matter that I forced my way into someplace I shouldn’t be. “Of course, most everybody from back then is already familiar to us. We don’t need all this to keep it fresh.”

I stand up with him and watch as he carefully slots both boxes back into place on the shelf.

“But a fire out at Fairhaven,” he says, turning to me. “And you. And that girl. History repeats itself, you know? Only this time we’ve got a body.”

This time. Me and that girl, history happening again, because we’re just like Mom and Katherine.

Everybody fucking knew, didn’t they?

It’s a harder hit to take. Everybody. Every single person in this town, I bet. They knew, and they must have thought I did too, because why would

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.