“Hey!” John called, chasing after her through the living room, the kitchen. “Hold up,” he yelled, but she had already flown through the open door and into the yard.

She chanced a look over her shoulder as she made for the fence. He remembered that he still had Woody’s knife in his hand, realized how that must look to her, and stopped. She hesitated again, but her body was still moving. Moving forward.

He watched her fall in slow motion, her bare foot catching on the broken fence, her head slamming into the ground. John waited. She didn’t get up. He waited some more. She still did not move.

Slowly, he stepped into the backyard, the grass soft under his feet. He remembered how it had felt when he got out of Coastal to walk on grass for the first time in twenty years. His feet were used to solid concrete or red Georgia clay packed hard as brick from thousands of men pacing it every day. The grass in the cemetery had felt so soft, like he was stepping on clouds as he followed his mother’s coffin toward her grave.

Twenty years and he had forgotten what grass felt like. Twenty years of loneliness, of isolation. Twenty years of Emily suffering the bimonthly degradation of visiting her son. Twenty years of Joyce being eaten up inside by the knowledge of what kind of monster her brother was.

Twenty years of Woody living on the outside, getting a good job, marrying, having a kid, making a life.

John stepped carefully over the fence. He realized he still had Woody’s folding knife in his hand, and he put it on the ground beside him as he knelt by the girl. He had learned how to check a pulse at the prison hospital. She didn’t have one. Even without that evidence, he could see from the way her skull was broken that she had probably died the minute her head had slammed against a large rock on the other side of the fence. Her blood was smeared across the quartz, pieces of long blonde hair sticking into the wet.

He sat back on his heels, his mind going over the last time he had seen Mary Alice. Her eyes. He would never forget her eyes, the way she had stared into nowhere. Her body told the real story, though. She had endured horrible things, unspeakable things. In his mind, he could still recall the blown-up pictures from his trial, the photographs showing Mary Alice Finney’s violated body splayed out for the world to see. He remembered his aunt pacing back and forth in front of the jury, and how he’d thought at the time that Lydia’s pacing was bad because all it did was draw their attention to the pictures that were right behind her.

“It’s okay,” John had told Lydia when she’d come to Coastal and explained that their appeals were exhausted, that he would more than likely die in prison. “I know you did everything you could.”

Lydia had told him not to talk about drugs with the police, not to mention Woody because bringing her son into it would open up John’s past drug abuse and they didn’t want that, did they? If Woody was put on the stand, he’d tell the truth.

They didn’t want Woody telling the truth, did they?

That night at the party, Woody had said, “No hard feelings,” tossing him the baggie. Was that when he had decided to hurt Mary Alice?

No hard feelings. John didn’t have any feelings left—just rage that burned like he’d swallowed gasoline and lit a match.

He looked down at the girl. She was a child, but she was also a messenger.

John’s stomach clenched as he slid his gloved fingers into her mouth, pinched her tongue between his thumb and forefinger.

Woody had brought all of this to John’s door. John would put it right back on his. The most important thing he learned in prison was that you never touched another man’s property unless you were willing to die for it.

“Woody,” he had called him, but that was a boy’s name and Woody wasn’t a boy anymore. Like John, he was a man. He should be called by a man’s name.

Michael Ormewood.

John picked up the knife.

CHAPTER TWENTY

JUNE 15, 1985

You need to walk it off,” John told Mary Alice. “You can’t go home like this.”

“Have you ever kissed a girl?”

He blushed and she laughed.

“Mark Reed,” she told him. “He thinks he’s my boyfriend because he kissed me after the game.”

John kept quiet, saying a silent prayer of death for Mark Reed, quarterback of the football team, driver of a red Corvette, and proud owner of much body hair, which the fucker liked to show off around the locker room like he was working at freaking Chippendale’s.

“You didn’t answer me,” Mary Alice said, and John thought about Woody’s bag of white powder in his pocket.

She could read his mind. “Let me try it.”

“No way.”

“I want to.”

“No you don’t.”

“Come on.” She reached into his pocket and her hand brushed against him. John sucked in air so hard he was surprised his lungs didn’t explode.

Mary Alice was holding the bag up to the streetlight. “What’s so good about it?”

John couldn’t answer. He had more pressing matters requiring his attention.

She opened the bag.

He came to his senses. “Don’t do that.”

“Why not? You do.”

“I’m a loser,” he said. “Isn’t that what you told me?”

There was a noise behind them and they both turned to look.

“Cat,” Mary Alice guessed. “Come on.”

She had taken his hand and John let her lead him down the street toward her house. John stayed quiet as she took him through her backyard. He knew her bedroom was on the bottom floor, but he hadn’t been expecting her to open the window and climb in.

“What are you doing?”

“Shh.”

A twig snapped behind him. He turned again, but all he could see was shadows.

Mary Alice said, “Come on.”

He climbed up, stopping halfway over the sill, whispering, “Your mom will kill me if she finds me in here.”

“I don’t care,” she whispered back, turning on a Hello Kitty lamp that cast a thin halo of light.

“You sleep with a nightlight?”

She playfully slapped his shoulder. “Just get in.”

John landed softly. Her bed was pushed up underneath the window. They were both sitting on her bed. Mary Alice’s bed. John felt his erection return with a vengeance.

If Mary Alice noticed, she didn’t say. “Show me how to do it,” she asked, handing him the bag of coke.

“I’m not going to.”

“I know you want to.”

He did. God, he did. Anything that would give him the ability to get past his own idiotic personality and kiss her.

“Show me,” she repeated.

He unknotted the bag and used his finger to scoop some out.

“You snort it,” he said. “Like this.”

John coughed, almost a gag, as the powder hit the back of his throat. It tasted bitter, metallic. He tried to get enough spit to swallow but his mouth was too dry. His heart did something funny, like a flop, then he felt as if a knife had slammed into it.

Mary Alice looked scared. “Are you—”

The coke hit his brain. Two seconds, tops, and he was so fucked up he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He saw stars—actual stars—and he fell forward, right into Mary Alice. She put her hands on his face to steady him and he tilted his chin up, his lips meeting hers.