Return of the Reaper novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: What Anna Said

He answered her in the farmhouse kitchen, with the stove ticking and Lila's small hand gripping the cuff of his sleeve.

She had come in from the cellar without letting go of him.

He sat her on a chair, knelt on the worn linoleum so his face was lower than hers, and told her the truth.

"I used to hurt people for a living," he said. "I was very good at it."

"Why?"

"Because I was young and angry, and a man gave me work."

"After you were born I wanted to stop. When Mommy got sick, I did."

"But the man in the building."

"He had a gun pointed at Noelle. I made a bad choice and I made it fast."

Lila's eyes searched his face.

"Was it a bad choice, or the only choice?"

He had no answer for that.

"I don't know," he said honestly. "I'm still working it out."

She was quiet for a while.

Then she put Mister Pie into his lap.

"He doesn't like it when you scare people," she said. "But he likes it when you come."

Doyle pressed his face into the owl's worn gray feathers for a moment.

When he looked up, Noelle was standing at the sink with her back to them and her hand over her mouth.

Abel took Lila upstairs for a bath and a story.

The men from the Suburban were taped in a row in the barn.

"I'll tow them back to Lackawanna after dark," Abel said, "in their own truck, with the horn taped down."

It was nearly dusk when Doyle went out to the barn to be alone.

He sat down on a hay bale in the cold dim and let it come.

He heard the boards creak behind him, and he knew without looking who it was.

"I'm going to leave her here," he said.

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