Page 87 of The Fall of Iris Henley
KOENIG RANCH
I feel the sound it makes on his skull, dull and resounding, more than hear it.
The impact vibrates through his body. Then he falls still.
All the strength leaves my body. The rock is still there in my hands. I toss it to the side quickly, afraid to look at it. Afraid to look down at Carter.
If I can stay here in this moment, nothing else has to happen. I don’t have to hear anything else, see anything else, learn anything else. I don’t have to decide what’s next. I can justbe—a doll without a soul.
It sounds so peaceful.
But someone is pulling at my shoulder, my arm. Someone slaps me, light but firm, across the face. I blink, my eyes coming back to focus, and I’m about to tell her she’s got a lot of fucking nerve to lay hands on me after everything else, but then I see her face, pale as the moon. She’s saying something but I can’t track what it is. She tries again, one word, again and again, until I understand.
“Fire,” she shouts. “Fire!”
The candles. One rolled into the dead leaves that’d gathered in the corner of the cabin. We’re in a drought; there’s been no moisture out here for better than ten months. The place is a matchbox, a cornhusk, a dry and empty thing. Flames are licking along the wall now.
“Help me,” she moans. She’s got Carter by one arm and is trying to pull him, but he’s too heavy for her. I scramble to my feet, take his other arm. We are both strong—she’s got a gymnast’s legs, and even though I’m barely five-one, I’ve got a core like a slingshot—but he’s a big guy. We drag him a few inches and stop, a few inches and stop.
It’d be almost funny if the flames weren’t licking along the seams of the wall now.
We break free into the cool night air. We only manage to get Carter a few more feet before we let go.
Hayden collapses next to him, weeping. I half expect her to run to my car, start it up, and try to get away one last time, but it seems like she’s out of energy to fight. What does it matter? There’s no way out for her, not anymore. I should be grateful, I know, at least on some level; she chose not to let Carter kill me. She fought alongside me. Well, maybe gratitude will come later. Right now I just feel a dull and exhausted throb of anger at everything else she has done.
Somewhere down the road I can hear sirens. They have to be for us—there’s no way there’s something else going on in Varda on a Monday night. I don’t know who called for help, and for the moment I’m too tired to care. I fall into the cool dirt and watch the cabin catch fire.
I hope whoever is coming is too late to put it out.
DAY TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER 51
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 4:32PM
KOENIG RANCH
“There you go, Fidget. Good boy.”
Kendra holds a carrot out for the gelding. I watch as his weird horse lips maneuver gently over her hand to find it. He’s a beautiful horse, a luminous brown color in the sunlight that filters through the slats in the barn. I’ve been on him dozens of times, and I know how gentle he is. But a part of me has never gotten used to horses—their muscular proportions, their hot breath and dark eyes. In person they’re so different from the cartoon unicorns you grow up imagining. They’re big, and strange, and hard to read.
They’re mysteries, and I’ve had enough with mysteries.
But I put my hand on his neck anyway. I stroke his velvety fur. The feeling brings back memories of all the time I used to spend here. On Koenig Ranch. With Rocky.
“Did Rocky ever tell you he raised him from a baby?” Kendra says.
“No, he didn’t,” I said. “We didn’t always talk about stuff like that.” I wish now that we would have.
She pulls out her phone and scrolls through the pictures. Then she pulls up one of a tween Rocky, bottle-feeding a baby Fidget. Rocky looks impossibly young, his face freckled under the brim of his cap.
“He was in 4-H in middle school. I don’t know if you remember him from back then.” Kendra looks at the picture herself for a moment before putting it back in her pocket. “He quit when he got to high school. He said it was because he wanted to focus on football, but I think it was more that he didn’t like raising animals to be sent to slaughter. You’ve got to do that on a ranch, but he didn’t really have the stones for it.”
That makes me tear up a little. I try to blink it away, but Kendra sees. She looks exasperated.
“Dude, it’s okay,” she says. “Just cry already.”
“I feel like I’ve been crying nonstop for months now,” I say.
