Page 82 of Turn That River Red

“Come on, Mercy,” Ambrose says softly. “I can’t bring him back, but I can do this.”

I jerk my gaze up to him. His eyes aren’t shining anymore. He looks like a man.

When I blink, my tears fall. “Okay,” I whisper, and I push myself out of the car and slam the door behind me. Ambrose nods and walks up to the gate, sets the bag carefully down on the ground, and then swings the shovel hard against the lock.

The clang is immensely loud and echoes through the night, but Ambrose’s blow is powerful enough that the lock scatters across the ground. He yanks the chain away.

His power terrifies me. But that terror does something else to me, too, something I don’t let myself dwell on.

He holds the gate open for me. “To the left,” he says as I step through.

I walk along the path even though it means Ambrose follows behind me. At least I can hear his footsteps, heavy and ominous.

The night is warm and dry, a wind blowing the cemetery trees around and making it sound as if we’re surrounded by ghosts. I don’t understand why Raul is buried here and not at the Church of the Well.

Except I do understand, don’t I? He wasn’t important enough to Reverend Gunner to have a place at the church’s cemetery. He wasn’t even important enough for a memorial service.

I swallow the lump in my throat, my vision webbing with tears. When Ambrose puts his hand on my shoulder, I jump beneath his touch, my heart leaping to my throat.

“This way,” he murmurs into my ear, making my skin prickle.

“How do you even know where he’s buried?”

“I looked it up. It’s not far.”

He’s right; it’s not far. Even in the dark I can tell which grave is Raul’s because the ground is darker than the surrounding grass. Upturned soil.

“When did they bury him?”

“Three days ago,” Ambrose says quietly.

I squeeze my eyes shut against my tears. Because three days ago I was still at the Church of the Well. And I didn’t know. No one told me. I assumed Reverend Gunner was going to bury him in the church cemetery because I was a fool.

“This won’t take me long,” Ambrose says. “You can do—whatever you need. Speak to him. Speak to God.”

I flutter my eyes open. Ambrose watches me through the dark. “You don’t believe in God,” I say darkly. “Do you?”

“I do believe in God,” he says. “I just know he hates me for the same reasons you do.”

And then he starts digging.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

MERCY

While Ambrose digs, I pray.

I haven’t prayed since he killed Deacon Price. I haven’t prayed since I gave myself to Ambrose in the bunker, which had, at the time, felt like a prayer in and of itself—but a prayer to Ambrose, which made it a prayer to the devil even if I didn’t know it at the time. But tonight, in the warm air of the graveyard, I pray to God the Father, and to Jesus the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

I kneel in the grass and bow my head as Ambrose redigs Raul’s grave, my fingers clasped so tight my knuckles whiten. I don’t pray out loud; I don't want Ambrose to hear. But I send my thoughts up to Heaven, as jumbled and wild as they are.

I pray that God welcomes Raul into the heavenly hosts, even though I know He already has.

I pray for forgiveness and for deliverance from my sins, as numerous as they are, listing them out by rote. Impurity. Fornication. Blasphemy.

I listen for God’s answer, but all I hear is the wind and the quiet powdery thump as Ambrose digs out the dirt of Raul’sgrave. When I lift my gaze, it falls immediately on Ambrose, a strong dark shadow in the moonlight.

Heat flushes through me. Except it’s not lust. It feels like the Spirit, which I would feel during services at the Church of the Well, all those Christian voices joining together in worship. But how can it be the Spirit, when I also felt it that day Ambrose prayed over me? I was so sure it had been the Holy Ghost moving through him.

---