Eleanor says nothing. Tears stream down her face.
“What the fuck is happening here?” Anger sparks like a bursting lightbulb. “I have business, so if you fucks can’t—”
Hades faces me and the story assembles itself in a few seconds. Demeter was at the whorehouse for Zeus’s birthday last night. Cronos brought her here this morning. Eleanor called Hades and Zeus an hour ago. She still lives in the little cottage on the other side of Demeter’s greenhouse.
“They haven’t come out,” she says, voice thick. It’s the first time she’s spoken. “They—they haven’t come out.”
“Where’s the kid?”
“With a babysitter in the city,” Zeus says tonelessly. He could not give less of a fuck about where Demeter’s daughter is, or why Demeter is here with Cronos. I stayed the longest after we turned eighteen, though I could have left first. Demeter managed to keep me here an extra three months. Once I had that mangled piece of the rosary’s setting, I left. Not that I cared, either. “Maybe permanently.”
Hades huffs out a breath, and then he puts his hand back on Eleanor’s shoulder. “You don’t have to stay here.” Until this moment I didn’t know he was capable of sounding so gentle. “There’s a place for you in the city. You can stay there until the construction is done.”
She nods. It’s terrible, watching her try to stop crying. Eleanor hid many tears from us in the time we lived here. It seems she’s reached her limit.
“Do you have your things?” he asks.
“I want to go,” Eleanor answers. “But we can’t leave yet. Not until we know. That little girl—” She can’t finish the sentence.
She doesn’t need to. If Cronos has killed Demeter in the farmhouse, there’s a girl in the city who’s without a mother. Cronos will come after her, too.
The moon breaks free from a cloud, and I feel exposed by it. As if it’s illuminating all the guilt I’ve bottled up from my years in this place and spilled it over me right in this godforsaken yard, in front of this hellhole disguised as a peaceful refuge. This is why I’m here. If I do this thing for them, then maybe they’ll leave me alone. Maybe our debts will be settled. Maybe I can leave them in the past, where they belong, and never speak to them again.
“How long have you assholes been standing out here?” My question is too rough.
Hades ignores my tone. “Fifteen minutes.”
“I’m going in.”
“Good.” Zeus takes the first step away, back to where two other cars are parked haphazardly by the barn. His expression is so blank it’s become something else. He’s stricken. Wounded. By what? “Call me when you have a real invitation, Hades. I’m not in the mood for—”
Hades grabs him by the front of his shirt and pulls him back, cold and businesslike. “We’re all going in, you piece of shit.”
“Manners,” Zeus scolds, but he doesn’t argue. Hades sends Eleanor back to her cottage and tells her to wait there for him. He’s rolling up his sleeves when he comes back to the porch steps.
It doesn’t matter. Whatever’s inside, I’ll deal with it. Not them. All my failures press up against the back of my neck and push me toward the house. Zeus and Hades follow. The hairs on my arms pull straight up as we cross the threshold and go into the narrow entryway. Stairs lead to the second floor. This hallway is too small by half. I don’t know how we ever fit in here.
No one breathes.
I thought I would be the only one to hold my breath, to listen for any sound in the house. I was wrong. My brothers do it too. At the same moment. And for this one moment, for this one thing we’re going to do, there’s no tension between us. No bitterness. Even my guilt has fallen away in the silence.
It’s the three of us together.
It won’t last. It can’t. I don’t want to be close to them. Don’t want to look into their faces and be reminded of all the times I couldn’t save them or chose not to and everything that’s happened in the wake of those fucked-up years.
We haven’t discussed it, but they know we can’t search the house. Creaky floors beyond the front entry will give us away. The sound of rustling leaves filters in through the walls. It’s the same as it was when we lived here. It was possible to find some peaceful hours in the middle of the night. That’s when I taught Hades to swim, then Zeus. It’s when Hades would climb out his window and disappear into the woods. More than once, I followed him to make sure he didn’t drown himself in the lake. He never did. Mostly he sat on the shore and looked up at the sky.
The middle of the night is when Zeus would make notes at the kitchen table, all the lights off, one candle lit on the countertop. I didn’t realize there was a schedule for years. He would go downstairs at twenty after one. Nine times out of ten, I’d hear Demeter go down after him at one thirty, her footsteps light and quick on the floor.
She moved fast because she was afraid of the dark, except when she was with him. He would make her shells and cheese by moonlight or candlelight because she was afraid of the daylight, too. Could hardly bring herself to eat if she thought Cronos might come home. Her wish for him to love her didn’t eclipse her fear of him. He had strict rules about when we were supposed to have food, but Zeus risked it anyway. Paid for it more than once. Probably more times than I witnessed. Anything could have happened at the whorehouse. Judging from the way he looks now, it was unspeakable at the whorehouse.
My heart beats harder, louder, and guilt creeps back in.
A noise at the back of the house shoves it aside in favor of pure adrenaline.
The back of the house, and upstairs. Hades looks up toward the noise, his eyes black and hard. That’s where the master bedroom is. Down the hall, past two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a second staircase leading up to the attic. Where our bedrooms were. Where I carried Hades the day I let Cronos go after him.
We don’t have to go up that far. I won’t.
I’m closest to the stairs and the first to move. No point waiting. It’ll only give me a fucking heart attack. There won’t be space for the three of us to go into the bedroom together. They’ll have to stay back. It’s better that way.
We avoid the third step from the bottom. My pulse is such an intense pressure in my ears that I can’t hear anything else.
Which is why I can’t hear the other noises until we’re halfway down the hall.
Dim light bleeds through the cracks of the doorframe. He’s got a lamp on. My stomach turns over, then turns again. Hades curses under his breath. My mind refuses to put it together. The pieces are here, in front of me, but the part of me that reasons is sprinting for the sea. I can’t think. Can’t recognize the sound. It keeps happening, again and again and again.
Zeus taps me on the arm. I can’t hear what he says over my thundering heartbeats. Cover your ears. He’s trying to warn me, but I don’t know why he would. What could be worse than what we’ve already lived through?
I brush him off and go for the door. No more hesitation. No more waiting.
It opens.
I’m ready for a battle with the hollow panel. I expected it to be locked, so I’m not ready to see what’s inside.
It’s not Demeter’s dead body.