The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024 by S. A. Cosby

Author:S. A. Cosby [Cosby, S. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780063315860
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

I told you I would lie to you, and I did. And now I will tell you the truth.

The story about the breast implants and the detective violating the corpse of a murdered woman really did happen, but it was in the case of the banker who killed his wife and got away with it the year before Mr. Simmons killed his wife and got away with it. Mr. Simmons got set free because of a witness who maybe lied or maybe got confused. It’s not as good a story. So I used the terrible detail, scavenged it from the dead. Because that is what I do.

Aurora and I tried to stay together, but of course it fell apart that first semester of college. But listen: everything ends, every fruit fly and every blue whale and every diamond and every star, and if it all falls then nothing does.

Curtis really is dead. He died in a hotel room meth-lab shootout with the cops. Like something I’d write in one of my books. I’ve tried to use his death in a few different stories, but it hasn’t quite worked yet. Someday.

Matt is dead too. He died in his thirties of complications brought on by neglected diabetes and heavy drinking. Donella, who watched over him in those last days when he didn’t have anyone left to stand for him, called me the day before he died. She told me he wanted to talk to me. And I didn’t call him, even though I knew it was the last day. Maybe I was angry, maybe I was scared, but either way he tried to end with us in peace and I didn’t call him back. And I have to live with that.

You get older and the thing between you and the world gets thicker, stained, harder to see through. But there’s plenty I can still see. I can see I was right about a lot of things back then when I was an angry punk kid who wanted to burn the world down because adults are selfish and cruel and scared. And the fact that I’m one of them now only proves the point.

I left, and I never moved back. I took my love of the darkness and I shaped it into something I could live off of, something I could sell. Like I’m doing right now. Because that’s the best thing I can figure to do in this world we’ve made.

I don’t know if I ever reached my potential, or if maybe I’d already reached it back in that savage year. What I do know is, the thing I left my hometown to find, I never found, and the thing I left to run away from has stuck to me the entire time. The only peace I have found is to see that it will never leave me, and learn to live with that, and that helps me.

Sometimes.

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.