Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
“Hey,” I said.
He nodded at the coffeemaker. “It’s almost done.”
I crossed to the cabinet where we kept the mugs and got one down, setting it on the counter. My hands still trembled from the nightmare. When the coffeemaker finished its cycle, I tried to pour a cup. The hot liquid splashed over the rim of the mug and spread across the counter in a dark, steaming pool.
I made a sound under my breath and set my cup down before snagging a paper towel.
Rip moved from his stool. He didn’t say anything. He reached past me and picked up the carafe himself, filled my mug steadily, and set the carafe back in place. He gently took the paper towels from my hand and urged me to the table while he wiped up the spill. He set the mug in front of me and went back to his stool. I wrapped both hands around it and sat there for a moment just letting the warmth come through the ceramic.
“Nightmare?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He didn’t ask what about. Just drank his coffee in silence.
I pulled out the stool across from him and sat. The kitchen was quiet enough that the hum of the refrigerator was audible. Outside the narrow window above the sink, the sky was still completely black with only the faint halo of security lights filtering in.
“Can I ask you something?”
Rip set his mug down. “Anything.”
“Your name.” I’d been wanting to ask since we’d spoken in the garden, since he’d told me the outline of why he’d gone to prison. “Rip. Where does it come from?”
The corner of his mouth moved. Not a smile exactly. “My name is Randall Isaac Perry.”
I stared at him. Worked it out. “R.I.P.”
“Yeah.”
“And you killed someone.”
“I did.” He said it the same way someone might confirm they’d been to a particular city once. Plain, factual.
“You told me some of what happened, but I get the feeling there was more to it. Was there?” I didn’t know why I asked. Maybe because he’d heard the worst of me out in the garden that afternoon and hadn’t recoiled.
Rip wrapped his hands around his mug and looked at it for a moment. “When my brother was twelve,” he said, “I was in my senior year of college, so I lived away most of the time. I always came home on the weekends, though. Mostly because my brother hadn’t been acting right for a while and I wanted to make sure he stayed safe.” I read between the lines and sucked in a breath but kept silent. “I came home from school early one weekend. I found Ethan in the shower, water so hot his skin had gone red. He’d been scrubbing himself with a washcloth and a shit ton of soap.”
He paused, his jaw working. “I had to get it out of him piece by piece. What our stepfather had been doing to him while I was at school. Not once. Not twice. For months. Close to a year. And it all just clicked into place. I’d been right Ethan… had been acting off.”
The refrigerator hummed. I held my coffee and didn’t move.
“I took Ethan to school,” Rip continued. “Then came back home. Our stepfather was in the kitchen.” His voice stayed flat and even, but I heard the underlying emotion he tried to hide. “I told him what Ethan had told me. He laughed. Said that, yeah, he’d fucked my brother and he would continue to fuck my brother as long as he lived in that house.” Rip’s knuckles flexed around the mug. “I don’t have a clear memory of exactly what happened next. But when the police got there and finally pulled me off of him, there wasn’t much left of his face.”
He took a sip of coffee.
“He was already dead?”
“Oh, yeah. Dead and then some.”
I took another sip of coffee, wrapping both hands around the mug and lacing my fingers loosely. “And prison?”
“Prison is a different world,” he said. “When you go in alone, without protection, you become a target. The first fight came to me inside two hours. A man twice my size thought a new fish was an easy mark.” Rip’s expression didn’t change. “He was wrong. After that, word got around. But some people decide they need to test it anyway. One of them had a shank.” He turned his forearm slightly and I saw the scar there, jagged and pale along the inside of his forearm. “Killed him before he finished what he started. The other one, six months later, was trying to take out someone I’d started watching out for. Younger kid who reminded me of my brother.” He set down his mug. “So. Three men total. After that last killing, everyone started calling me Rip.”
“Do you regret any of them?”
He considered this with the same deliberate care he gave everything. “The stepfather? No. The two in prison?” He paused. “I regret the circumstances that made it necessary. I don’t regret being alive.”