Page 79 of Grimstone

“Where are we usually?” I say, smiling slightly.

“Your world. That’s why you like it, isn’t it? Alone at your house, everything exactly how you want it…that’s why you didn’t want me driving up your road. But you don’t mind so much now…”

She tilts her head, half teasing, half asking.

“It’s definitely gotten more interesting.”

“Is that what I am to you? Interesting?”

“Yes.” I look down into her face. “That’s exactly what you are.”

“I’ll take it,” Remi says, amused. “Better than being boring.”

We’ve started walking in the direction of the hardware store.

“Is that what you’re here for?” I nod toward the flat green awning.

“Yup,” Remi says. “Finally making some progress on the main level.”

“Is Emma the only one who gets a tour?”

“You want to come see the house?” Remi’s eyes flash up at me, brighter than ever against the gray sky.

She’s checking my face, wondering if I’ve already been inside. I haven’t forgotten her accusation at 7 a.m. on my doorstep, and clearly, neither has she.

“I’ve seen the house a million times,” I remind her. “Ernie wasn’t exactly making the trip to my place.”

“You were more than just his doctor.”

“Yeah,” I admit. And then, “I miss him,” slips out.

“Me, too,” Remi says with strong and simple emotion.

In the silence that follows, I’m sure we’re both sifting through memories in which Ernie burns brightly and vividly.

“He wasn’t really my uncle,” Remi tells me. “He was my dad’s uncle. My great-uncle, I guess? He was some of our only family—my dad was an only child. My mom had a sister, but they loathed each other. She didn’t even call after the funeral, didn’t send flowers. Ernie said we could come stay with him, but he was so sick by then, and Jude didn’t want to leave his school…”

Remi sighs, her arm heavy as it hangs on my elbow.

“Maybe that was the wrong choice. I thought I could take care of Jude, but I don’t know how good a job I did.”

“Better than most kids could have done. That’s all you were, a kid.”

“I had to be an adult too soon, and now I feel like I was never an adult at all. I missed a lot of things, normal things…never went to college. Never traveled on my own. Never had a job in an office…” She laughs. “But I’d hate that.”

A flood of all the things I’ve never done washes over me. At first it was the sun, the hateful sun, and then I found myself in a new kind of prison…chains I chose willingly, gratefully, until they began to choke and strangle and finally dragged me down to a hell that still feels like a ragged, dark hole in my brain, a place beyond memory…

“What are you thinking about?”

Remi startles me with her presence, solid and warm on my arm. Fuck, I’m not used to company. I’m still disappearing inside my own head.

“There were a lot of things I thought I’d do…I haven’t done any of them, either.”

“It’s not too late,” Remi says. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Forty-one.”

“There you go—you’re not even halfway dead.”

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