Page 34 of Bitter House

He grabs fistfuls of mud, throwing them back. He plucks a worm from between his fingers, tossing it aside before he pulls the final bit of dirt back. His shoulders go tense. “It’s a body,” he says softly as the bone of the arm comes into view. His eyes find mine again. “Whoever wrote that letter, they were telling the truth.”

Which means they could be telling the truth about all of the rest of it, too.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

BRIDGET

Cole slips out of the hole in the earth, dusting off his hands on the butt of his jeans. He’s out of breath from fear and exertion as he stares down into the hole. All we can see at the moment is the arm. Cole stopped digging once we had it uncovered, but I’m positive the rest of the skeleton is there. And, since the note said bodies, I’m assuming there could be more than one.

“We need to call the police,” he says firmly, turning his head to look at me.

I nod. “I know.” My chest feels empty and cold, stretched out like a deflated balloon. All of this anticipation and determination, and now, I’m not sure why I was so determined to find something. There is no sense of accomplishment that comes with this discovery, only devastation and fear.

“They’ll be able to dig the rest of the body up, to tell who it is. They’ll be able to find more if there’s more to find.”

I take in a deep breath. “Um.” Swallow. “How will we… I mean, how will we tell the police we found it? How will we say we knew where to look?” I can’t bear to meet his eyes. Though I knew nothing about this body before today, somehow this feels like my fault. My family, my problem. It feels like I’ve dragged him into it.

“We’ll show them the letters. They may even be able to figure out who’s sending them.”

Again, I nod, but it doesn’t feel like me. It feels like someone else is controlling me. Like I’m a puppet on a string. “Right.”

“We should go to the house and call,” he says, taking a step back. “If we dig any more, they could say we tampered with the crime scene or something.”

“Okay.” But instead of following him, instead of walking in the direction he’s heading, though I know he’s right, I walk toward the dirt pile. I grab my shovel and begin pushing the dirt into the hole with all my strength, covering up everything we’ve just discovered.

“Wait. What are you doing?” He runs forward, grabbing my arms to stop me, but I shove him off.

“Stop! Let me go!” I cry, working harder. Faster. I watch as the snow-white bones disappear beneath the dark soil, as the darkness swallows them whole.

He reaches for the shovel again, trying to stop me. He grabs hold of the shovel, and try as I might to pull it away from him, I can’t get it out of his hand. We’re at an impasse, both of us holding the shovel’s handle with an iron grip. “What are you thinking, B? Talk to me. Tell me why, and I’ll help you. But I need to understand what’s happening.”

I stop at the calm in his tone, staring up at him. I was so worried he’d force me to stop, so worried he wouldn’t listen to me, but it seems he’s prepared to. Perhaps he won’t agree, but at least I can try. My arms burn from exertion, aching like bruises as I turn, releasing the shovel to him.

“I…look, I know it doesn’t make any sense when I’m the one who forced you to help me look for the body, but I don’t want to call the police yet,” I say.

He locks his jaw, looking toward the ground then back to me. When he speaks again, somehow his voice is even gentler. “We…we found a body. We have to report it. We can’t just pretend it didn’t happen.”

“I know.” I put my hands up, pleading my case as I try to make my sudden change of heart make sense to both of us simultaneously. “I know. And we will call the police and tell them everything. I promise you we will. I just…there are three more letters.”

“Bridget, this is a body. An actual human skeleton. Letters or no letters, we can’t just sit on this information. We could be charged with covering up a crime or something.” He’s pleading with me to understand, and I do, but I can’t give up. I have to know the rest.

“I swear to you, we will call the police as soon as we’ve gotten the last letter. It’s just three more letters, three more days. What if the last ones are the most important? What if there are bigger, more terrible secrets than this? I mean, if they’ve already told us about the body and my parents, what else could there be? What if it only gets worse from here? If we call the police now, there’s a chance we might never know what else is out there. If we’d found the body last night and called the police…I might not know the truth about my parents.” My voice cracks, and his face goes soft, suddenly understanding.

“We still don’t know that what they said is the truth. We have no proof Vera was involved in your parents’ accident. It doesn’t make sense to me that she could’ve been. The police never said there was anything suspicious about it.”

My chest tightens, and I stare at him, wanting to say more, to beg him to side with me, but I don’t know if there’s a point. If he wants to call the police, I’ll have to let him and that kills me.

“You really want to wait for the last three letters?”

His words surprise me, filling me with hope as I clutch my hands together in front of my chest. “Three more days,” I tell him. “And then we can tell the police everything. Hand over the letters. We can say it took us that long to find the body. We’ll cover it all back up for now, just in case anyone were to come snooping, and then in three days, we’ll report this. I promise.” I stare down into the hole. “That body has been there a long time, Cole. Three more days won’t hurt anything. Vera is dead and gone. We aren’t saving anyone by turning her in now.”

He looks away, clearly wrestling with what he wants to say. “If she did this, if she hurt someone—killed someone—we can’t protect her. Promise me you understand that. I won’t keep this secret forever. It’s too heavy.”

I touch his arm lightly. “No. I won’t protect her. I promise that’s not what this is about. I owe her nothing. I just want to know everything. That’s it.”

With a tight jaw, he nods, then hands me the shovel back. “Let’s get to work, then.”

We work together to push the dirt back into the ground—much easier than digging in the first place—and pat it down. Cole jumps on top of it, his shoes covered in mud, until the ground is nearly as flat as when we found it, though it’s obviously been recently dug up, the patches of grass intermingling with patches of dirt.

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