Page 67 of The Broken Places

He stood too. “Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for considering ... everything. You don’t have to turn us in, Lennon. You can help.” He left her where she stood, arms crossed, looking like she held the weight of the world on her slender shoulders.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The world breaks everyone and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.

—Ernest Hemingway

Seventeen Years Ago

Patient Number 0022

Ambrose stepped from the car, shutting the door behind him and watching as the taxi did a three-point turn, the driver giving a salute as he drove by and then out of sight. Ambrose took a deep, sustaining breath and began walking in the direction of the farm, past the leaning mailbox, the empty pasture, and the split rail fence that was falling apart in more sections than it was holding together.

The place where his story had begun.

There was a lump in his throat, and he felt mildly clammy. Ambrose categorized all his body’s sensations as he moved toward the place of his nightmares. It looked even more dilapidated than it had in the memories his brain had conjured during Dr. Sweeton’s therapy. But of course, his mind hadn’t been able to see past what it’d looked like the last timehe was here. Back then, the pasture hadn’t been overgrown with weeds taller than him.

Back then, his grandfather had been alive. Back then, he’d still been working this land, tending to the animals, making repairs, and performing maintenance. Apparently, his grandmother did none of that, nor did she hire anyone else to do it.

In a way, this slow walk was the culmination of the therapy he’d been through, or maybe the final test. He was here, at the scene of his real-life torment and the place that had haunted his nightmares ever since, and he was ... okay. He was okay. Sick. Sad. Nervous. Angry. But okay. And Ambrose DeMarce didn’t remember a day in his twenty-one years when he would have described himself as feeling okay. Especially standinghere.

He stepped up on the porch, careful to avoid the sections of rotting wood. Something scurried underneath a hole in the boards, and Ambrose grimaced and stepped over the opening. He brought his fist to the door and banged.

There were the sounds of someone descending the squeaky inside stairs, and a moment later, the door was pulled open. His grandmother stood in front of him, staring blankly.

“Hi, Grandma.” Damn, she looked old. Old and slight. What was she now? Seventy-five? She looked like she was a hundred and twenty. Whatever glint of life had once shone from her eyes had been completely extinguished.

The broken old woman looked him up and down, assessing him as well, and then moved back and gave a jerk of her head, inviting him inside.

And honestly? He didn’t want to step a foot inside the place. But he did anyway, because he needed to test himself even further, and he wouldn’t be sure he’d fully passed until he’d moved beyond the threshold.

It was filthy. Dusty and dirty, withstuffeverywhere. It’d never been anything but spick and span when his grandfather was alive. What wasthis? His grandmother’s final rebellion? A fuck-you to the tyrant who’d beaten her and then made her clean his floors until they shone?

And if it was, maybe he couldn’t blame her.

Even if this was no way to live.

But Ambrose was well acquainted withno way to live.

And deep down, he knew his grandmother was no rebel. She was too weak for that. Her body was still alive, but her spirit had curled up and died. He could practically smell the rot emanating through her dry, wrinkled skin. “Surprised to see you,” his grandmother said, huffing out a long-suffering sigh as she sank down into a wooden chair at the table in the middle of the room.

“I bet,” he said. Was she even more surprised that he was still alive? The cross still hung between the windows over the sink, the piece of dusty reed he remembered still draped over it. He’d read somewhere once that a crown of thorns and a reed had been given to Jesus to mock him before he was strung up on the cross. Ambrose’s gaze moved out the window next to that symbol of the rise above human cruelty, where he could see the edge of the shed in which he’d been tortured.

“I’m not here for a visit,” he told the old woman. “I’m here to let you know that there will be a lot of people on this farm in about an hour. The sheriff. A few dogs. A coroner.”

She showed no surprise, merely stared down at the ancient table, running her finger over a scratch in the wood.

“I doubt you’ll be surprised by what they find,” he said. A child. He wondered if they’d only find one.

His grandmother still showed no reaction, so Ambrose left the house and walked outside, drawing in a lungful of air and leaning against the porch railing.

Inside, he heard his grandmother climb back up the stairs, her footsteps heavy and slow.

Ambrose stared out at the scenery, and strangely, the first memory that popped into his head was of picking rhubarb and later dipping it ina bowl of white sugar. Even now, his mouth puckered at the recollection of the sweet and the sour.

The steeple of a church could be seen in the valley below, and Ambrose remembered going there on a field trip with his class. He recalled the way the stained glass windows had glittered in the sunshine, tossing rainbows on his skin. He’d expected to be overwhelmed by horrific memories here, and he was shocked that now that he remembered the entirety of his story, he was able to seeallthe threads it’d been woven with.

He leaned his face back and felt the warmth of the April sun, even while a chilly breeze ruffled his hair.

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