Mateo Santiago novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Not Missing

I listened.

I stood in the lantern light with my hand flat under my breastbone and heard my own heartbeat and the horses shifting in their stalls.

I heard the wind.

I didn't hear anything else.

"There's nothing," I said.

"Not to you," said Mateo.

"To me, there's a lot."

I looked up.

His eyes had gone that dark amber, and he was looking at my hand and not my face.

"I've heard it since the first night," he said.

"On the road, when I came off the ridge."

"I came down to get you away from those hunters, and I was twenty feet away when I heard it."

"Heard what?"

"Breathing," he said.

"Slow and deep.

"Like somebody asleep behind a locked door."

My mouth opened and nothing came out.

"It isn't missing, Sofia.

"It isn't dead, and it was never empty.

"It's buried."

The word dropped into the barn.

I took a step back, and then another, and sat down hard on a hay bale.

"Buried," I said.

"Under something heavy.

"Somebody put it there.

"Wolves don't bury themselves, not at twelve, not for thirteen years."

I laughed once, a short ugly sound.

"You've known for a month," I said.

"Yes."

"You let me stand there and ask you to dig.

"You let me cry in your truck.

"I begged you."

"I know."

"And you let me think I was an empty room."

"I did," he said, and he did not look away.

"I'd do it again, and I'll tell you why."

I was shaking too hard to be angry, but I tried.

"Say it," I said.

"If I'd told you in the first week, you'd have asked me to pull it up by the end of the day."

"You'd have done it for the hope of it.

"And I'd have said no, and you'd have said I was lying, and you'd have gone to a healer who would say yes."

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