The Last Handful of Clover - Book 1: The Hereafter

1.04 Every Relationship is a Mystery

June 5, 9:29 pm

After tucking him in, Michelle came downstairs feeling as weary as she could ever remember being.

Keith had gone to sleep almost immediately, and she was surprised and grateful for that. He looked so haggard and tired, and even though it seemed the worst of his tears were past, there was still a sense of helplessness and defeat in him that scared her. He had been sleeping a lot since the murder, but he still looked drawn and exhausted. She supposed sleep was a coping mechanism, but was it a healthy one? She had no idea. This was unknown territory for them both. The police psychologist told her to expect that nothing would make sense, for either of them, for a while.

On the stairs, she felt a chill, and stopped. Over the railing, she could look down into the living room.

Where it happened...

She still felt that night, and the horror of it, clinging to her like a smell she couldn't get out of her hair. And it wasn't the blood and the death that haunted her the most, but the face of her dearest friend, broken and destroyed and empty. She shivered, remembering the way he had looked up at her as she burst into the house. He was crumpled on the floor, covered with blood, and looking up from Richard's shattered head in his lap. What still haunted her was the silent gasping, as if he was desperately trying to draw enough breath for another scream. It was something that she would never forget, and in the past three days she had replayed her memories of that night until she could no longer stand them.

How Keith had the presence of mind to speed dial her number that night, in the moments after Richard was shot, she didn't know. But that single act was all that he had in him. He must have dropped the phone before she answered, because when she accepted the call, all she heard was wailing. She dropped her own cell phone on the kitchen floor, and was out the door and running, with no idea of what she would find.

She and Pil lived near L street, which was only two and a half short blocks away, so Michelle ran the short distance in barely a minute. And she turned Keith and Richard's corner just as the police were arriving to investigate the smashed Tacoma pickup that had rammed a tree down the block. The blaring of the radio in the smashed truck was loud, but it couldn't drown out the sound of Keith's cries billowing through the shattered window. The police officer getting out of his car heard it, and she screamed at him with words that she could no longer remember. But it was enough that the cop broke into a run at her heels.

She barely saw the boy sitting on the lawn, his head in his hands, as she ran past him. Leaping onto the porch, she already had her key out, and the cop almost caught up to her before she could get the door open. He too was yelling now, but Michelle couldn't hear it.

She wished she could forget the moments that followed. She kept replaying the whole horrible experience in her mind. Keith was on the floor, with Richard's shattered head in his lap. There was so much blood everywhere. The spray pattern of gore against the wall framed Keith's twisted, splattered, tortured face. She remembered the blood on the wall looked like a tree—the branches spreading over the two broken figures who had taken shelter below.

She couldn't help it. She screamed at that moment too. Just once, but it was loud. The cop was standing next to her, cursing and fumbling with his radio with one hand, the other reaching out as if he wanted to grab her sleeve. Keith had lost his breath and was hyperventilating. The amount of gore that covered him and Richard made it look like a dozen people had been murdered in that room, rather than just one. He raised one bloody hand up toward her, before allowing it to fall onto Richard's still chest. And then he made a horrific sound, deep in his throat. It reminded Michelle of the death rattle she had once heard a deer make, just after her father shot it on a hunting trip. It took her knees out from under her, and before she knew what she was doing, she was there in the muck and gore of it all, holding Keith's face, and she could hear herself saying, "Look at me! Keith! Look at me! Keep your eyes on me, Pea..."