I’m so sorry, Genevieve.
The thought makes something crack inside me. Some anger fighting its way through. The only people who have ever cared for me have been punished. My mother, my father, Genevieve. I have ruined lives, much like June has, just by existing. I push his hands aside before stepping off the ladder. I want to see what else is in those boxes. I want to peel back the tops, like I’m cracking open my own ribs for a look inside. It’s self-indulgent, and possibly self-destructive, but I need the truth. God, both June and I did. And look where it’s getting us both.
“Can I have a flashlight?” I ask, and Dominic pauses, as if he thinks I might use it to club him over the head. “Please,” I add, though it kills me.
He nods and hands it to me, his hand connecting with mine, and I make myself hold my ground, not flinching, not pulling away. And then I shine the light against the dirt walls, while everyone else prepares the food we brought in our bags, even though there’s plenty stashed here from Liam and June. But that food belongs to the dead. As does everything else in this place.
I’m looking for words traced into the dirt, her handprint, as she leaned against a wall. I’m looking for what she did for a year and a half down here. And I’m looking for the reason she left. She had been safe here. Safe and hidden, and it wasn’t until she left that people caught her trail again. She died while running, trying to get back into the woods before she was caught. Run down in a street, with nothing on her. With no one near her.
My God, June. Why did you leave the woods?
You were safe once.
I was safe once, too. But it wasn’t enough.
Chapter 13
“Take the cot,” dominic says. I’m not sure what’s with his change of attitude, but I don’t care for it. It’s somehow worse. Like I’ve done something to please him, and I guess I have.
All I did was exactly what they asked of me. I found June. I found what she wanted me to see, though none of us can make any sense of it. And she’s not finished with me.
Cameron hasn’t spoken to me again, not since Dominic has started being nice, as if I am somehow on his side. Maybe June wasn’t ever real to Cameron before—just a story, a legend, a person who never truly existed in his mind—but being here changes all that. Seeing her things, the signs she has left for me, the truth she has sealed inside those boxes … she’s real, and she’s guilty, and she’s me.
I grab a sleeping bag and unroll it across the cold ground, ignoring Dominic’s gesture. I draw the line at sleeping in her bed, shifting restlessly in her shadow. The material is cold, and definitely dirty, and I try not to imagine June curled up inside here in the winter, her blond curls spilling out as she tucks her chin farther inside, Liam smiling at her from nearby.
Casey takes a cot, and so does Dominic, wedging the ladder between himself and the wall. But he leaves the door over the top open. Maybe he doesn’t like the feel of a coffin either. Nobody would find us if we were trapped down here. June was counting on it.
My sleeping bag rustles every time I move. I am restless, living in her place. The outside noises fall away, and all that remains is the steady breathing of the people around me while I stare at the angled walls in front of me. I feel like if I stare at the dark corner for long enough, she will take solid form, emerging from the darkness. I turn away from the corner, and Cameron’s sleeping bag rustles nearby.
I feel like I am still on display, even in the dark, the sleeping bag giving me away: Alina turns to the right. Alina still isn’t sleeping. She turns over again. Pulls her legs up. Alina’s soul is restless. Like they can still see everything I’m thinking. Screw it. I kick out of the sleeping bag and stand in the dark, backing toward a wall in the blackness, waiting for my eyes to adjust, but they never do. The only thing I see is the square of moonlight shining through the entrance. I sit inside the square of light, and eventually I lie back against the ground, and I picture my mother.
I picture her looking exactly like she did in the article after she was arrested, saying to my father, “I cannot be responsible for the soul of June Calahan.” I picture a baby crying in a bassinet, all alone. And when she gets out of jail she changes her name and thinks, Finally I am free of her. And she disappears into the world that is so, so big, like Dominic says.
I feel the dirt taking root under my fingernails. I hope she’s happy. I really do.
I dream that someone is holding me underwater. I do not fight it.
I wake up gasping for breath, water dripping down my face, falling into my mouth, my open eyes—mud forming in the ground beneath me. I sit up and refocus, grasping for my bearings. Rain. It’s raining, and I’m in a cave. June’s cave. My hand rests over my heart as I try to slow my breathing. Cameron is up, or I have woken him with the gasping for breath, and it takes him a moment to realize what’s happening, dripping wet as I am in the middle of a dark cave.
He’s beside me then, pulling me up, and says, “We need the tarp before it spreads.” But the tarp is up above and we are down below and the ladder is behind Dominic. And I am covered in mud and dirt and grime. So I take a breath and I stand under the rain, already coming down lighter than a minute ago, like it’s a shower. And I feel the clothes sticking to my skin, and Cameron’s eyes taking me in, and the mud and dirt and grime trailing down my body to the earth.
He comes closer, takes my hand, like he’s going to pull me out of the rain. He tries, tugging me toward him, but he’s not expecting me to resist so much—I do not want anyone touching me, and I do not want to go back to the dark shadows, where June lingers—and when I pull back, he falls toward me, suddenly wet. He steps back, but then his face shifts, and instead he steps closer, underneath the hole with me, and he laughs silently as the rain soaks him as well. He wraps his arms around my back, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and the rain and his arms feel so good I can’t even think about why, why he’d possibly do such a thing, before I’m resting my head against his chest and trying to pretend that I’m laughing instead of crying, until the rain lets up.
He steps away first, without any warning, as if he had been in a trance and someone has suddenly freed him. I don’t understand at first, and then I see Casey sitting upright, flashlight in hand, watching us. “Dominic,” she says. “The tarp.” They go to work, climbing to the surface, securing the top, making sure nothing is damaged. And after, she climbs back into her bed, flashlight still on. She looks at me once more, like I am responsible. Like he was under a spell, and I am the witch.
We bring the boxes to the surface in the morning, even though the ground is wet, the water still dripping periodically from the leaves, or maybe the sky—it’s impossible to tell. Dominic puts the green tarp over the other boxes when we’re not looking through them.
They are full of everything. Full of nothing. They are the random assortment of thoughts and things that June decided to keep. We cannot tell her motive or her intentions. Whether this wooden box with wet matches inside means something besides This is the box I kept matches in, but they got wet. Whether the engraving on the bottom, the RGB, are initials—whether they have meaning behind them, or whether they’re the generic branding of the manufacturer.