Page 84 of Turn That River Red

He stands up and looks across the grave at me. “The two of us are here today to celebrate the life of Raul Alvarez, who was taken from this world too soon—” Ambrose hesitates. “That’s true, by the way. I shouldn’t have?—”

“Keep going,” I tell him, my heart twisting into knots. “Please. Just—be a preacher right now.”

Ambrose nods, takes a deep breath?—

And transforms.

He becomes the man I saw in Reverend Gunner’s office: a fire and brimstone preacher with one eye on Heaven and the other on hell. I realize now that I was glimpsing his own darkness, but as he launches into a recitation of Psalm 23, his darkness seems to melt away.

“‘Jehovah is my Shepherd; I shall not want,’” he says, hands clasped in front of his waist, his eyes on mine. “‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…’”

I let the familiar words flow over me. My tears brim up again, and I wipe them away with the back of my hand. The truth is I didn’t even know Raul that well. We exchanged friendly words here and there. I brought him water, same as the rest of the soldiers. He taught me a little Spanish and waved to me at the services. But I didn’t know anything about him. I didn’t know he had a family in Cocana. Most people at the church come from elsewhere. They come from far away.

Ambrose’s voice is a soft rhythm in the background as I stand by Raul’s grave and weep. I hardly knew him at all, but he was the closest thing to a friend I ever had. I went from an orphan to a wife and helpmeet.

Until I met Ambrose. Until I met the devil.

I lift my gaze to him, where he’s still reciting Psalms from memory. His eyes shine again, jolting me a little. But it occurs to mehe’sthe one I know the best. Not Raul. Certainly not Reverend Gunner. And not God, either.

Ambrose Echeverría, the cold-blooded murderer currently praying over one of his many victims.

“Do you want to say anything, Mercy?” he asks, pulling me out of my thoughts. “About—about the deceased?”

I look down at the gravesite, at the churned-up dirt. “No,” I whisper. “He’s in Heaven now. He doesn’t need me.”

Ambrose nods, then starts shoveling dirt back into place. I watch him, the wind blowing my skirt around my thighs, and for the first time since I discovered the truth about Ambrose, I feel calm.

“Have you ever done this before?” My voice is more clear than I expected.

Ambrose keeps shoveling. “Buried a body? Yeah.”

“No. Performed a funeral for someone you—” I whisper the last word. “Killed.”

This, he doesn’t answer right away. He just keeps shoveling the dirt. “Yes,” he finally says. “I used to do it all the time. But this is different.”

The shovel scrapes and the dirt thumps. The wind blows through the trees. I feel hot and strange and free. Not like myself. Not like Mercy Gunner, anyway.

“How is it different?”

Ambrose throws the last of the dirt into place and packs it down with the back of his shovel. To my untrained eye, the grave looks undisturbed.

Ambrose walks around the dirt, like he doesn’t want to step on it—a superstition I learned when I was a child before my parents died and I’d ever heard of the Church of the Well. Hetosses the shovel in the grass and takes my hand, hesitantly, like he expects me to pull away. Maybe I should. I don’t.

“I’ve never done it with the hope that someone would forgive me,” he says softly.

I jerk my gaze up to him, my breath tightening. His eyes burn like hellfire. That strangeness I feel intensifies, like I’m drifting outside of myself.

“Are you saying you want me to forgive you?”

Ambrose nods, his fingers tightening around my hand. “I hope you’ll forgive me,” he says. “Although I understand if you don’t. Either way, after this—I’ll let you go.”

I’m stunned at his words. Stunned at the sadness I see crawling across his face, even in the dark.

“Let me go?” I shake my head. “Just like that?”

“Well, on one condition. That you don’t go back to that church.” Disgust curls in his words. “Don’t go back to Sterling Gunner. I’ll give you money, a bus ticket, whatever you need. Go to the cops if you want; they won’t find me. But don’t go back to the piece of shit. Gunner doesn’t deserve you.”

I can’t breathe. I certainly don’t know what to say. And still, I keep my hand linked to Ambrose’s, my eyes on his face, trying to comprehend what he’s saying to me.

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