River’s End

kill.

Three
    She didn’t want to take a nap. She wasn’t sleepy. But Olivia tried, because Aunt Jamie had asked her to, and lay in the bed that, wasn’t hers.
    It was a pretty room with little violets climbing up the walls and white curtains with tiny white dots on them that made everything soft and filmy when you looked through them. She always slept in this room when she came to visit. But it wasn’t home.
    She’d told Grandma she wanted to go home, that she could come, too. They could have a tea party in the garden until Mama got home.
    But Grandma’s eyes had gotten bright and wet, and she’d hugged Olivia so hard it almost hurt.
    So she hadn’t said anything more about going home.
    When she heard the murmur of voices down the hall, behind the door of the room where her grandparents were staying, Olivia climbed out of bed and tiptoed from the room. Aunt Jamie had said, when Olivia asked, that Grandma and Grandpop were taking naps, too. But if they were awake, maybe they could go out and play. Grandma and Grandpop liked to be outside best of all. They could play ball or go swimming or climb a tree.
    Grandpop said there were trees that reached right up and brushed the sky in Washington. Olivia had been there to visit when she was a tiny baby and again when she’d been two, so she couldn’t remember very well. She thought Grandpop could find a sky-brushing tree for her so she could climb all the way up and call her mother. Mama would hear if she could just get closer to heaven. When she opened the door, she saw her grandmother crying, her aunt sitting beside her holding her hands. It made her stomach hurt to see Grandma cry, and it made her afraid when she saw her grandpop’s face. It was so tight and his eyes were too dark and mean. His voice, when he spoke, was quiet but hard, as if he were trying to break the words instead of say them. It made Olivia cringe back to make herself small.
    “It doesn’t matter why he did it. He’s crazy, crazy with jealousy and drugs. What matters is he killed her, he took her away from us. He’ll pay for it, every day of his miserable life, he’ll pay. It’ll never be enough.”
    “We should’ve made her come home.” Tears continued to slide down Grandma’s cheeks. “When she told us she and Sam were having trouble, we should have told her to bring Livvy and come home for a while. To get her bearings.”
    “We didn’t know he’d gotten violent, didn’t know he’d hurt her.” Grandpa’s fists balled at his sides. “If I’d known, I’d have come down here and dealt with the son of a bitch myself.”
    “We can’t go back. Dad.” Jamie spoke wearily, for some of that responsibility was hers. She had known and said nothing. Julie had asked her to say nothing. “If we could, I know I’d be able to see a hundred different things I could do to change it, to stop it. But I can’t, and we have to face the now. The press—”
    “Fuck the press.”
    From her peep through the doorway, Olivia widened her eyes. Grandpop never said the bad word. She could only goggle as her aunt nodded calmly.
    “Well, Dad, before much longer they might look to fuck us. That’s the way of it. They’ll canonize Julie, or make her a whore. Or they’ll do both. We have to, for Livvy’s sake, take as much control as we can. There’ll be speculation and stories about her marriage and relationship with Sam—speculation about other men. Particularly Lucas Manning.”
    “Julie was not a cheat.” Grandma’s voice rose, snapped.
    “I know that, Mom. But that’s the kind of game that’s played.”
    “She’s dead,” Grandpop said flatly. “Julie’s dead. How much worse can it get?”
    Slowly, Olivia backed up from the door. She knew what dead meant. Flowers got dead when they were all brown and stiff and you had to throw them away. Tiffy’s old dog, Casey, had died and they’d dug a hole in the yard and put him inside, covered him up with dirt and grass.
    Dead meant you couldn’t come back.
    She kept moving away from the door while the breath got hot and thick in her chest, while flashes of blood and broken glass, of monsters and snapping scissors raced through her head.
    Then that breath burst out, burning over her heart as she started to run. And she started to scream.
    “Mama’s not dead. Mama’s not dead and in a hole in the yard. She’s coming back. She’s coming back soon.”
    She kept running, away from the shouts of her name, down the steps, down the