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niggling thoughts from time to time, but for the first time the flaws in my relationship with the vampire
hopped out of their own hidey hole and took over my brain.
I would never see Bill in the sunlight. I would never fix his breakfast, never meet him for lunch. (He could
bear to watch me eat food, though he wasn't thrilled by the process, and I always had to brush my teeth
afterward very thoroughly, which was a good habit anyway.)
I could never have a child by Bill, which was nice at least when you thought of not having to practice
birth control, but ...
I'd never call Bill at the office to ask him to stop on the way home for some milk. He'd never join the
Rotary, or give a career speech at the high school, or coach Little League Baseball.
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He'd never go to church with me.
And I knew that now, while I lay here awake listening to the birds chirping their morning sounds and
the trucks beginning to rumble down the road while all over Bon Temps people were getting up and
putting on the coffee and fetching their papers and planning their day that the creature I loved was lying
somewhere in a hole underground, to all intents and purposes dead until dark.
I was so down by then that I had to think of an upside, while I cleaned up a little in the bathroom and
dressed.
He seemed to genuinely care for me. It was kind of nice, but unsettling, not to know exactly how much.
Sex with him was absolutely great. I had never dreamed it would be that wonderful.
No one would mess with me while I was Bill's girlfriend. Any hands that had patted me in unwanted
caresses were kept in their owner's laps, now. And if the person who'd killed my grandmother had killed
her because she'd walked in on him while he was waiting for me, he wouldn't get another try at me.
And I could relax with Bill, a luxury so precious I could not put a value on it. My mind could range at
will, and I would not learn anything he didn't tell me.
There was that.
It was in this kind of contemplative mood that I came down Bill's steps to my car.
To my amazement, Jason was there sitting in his pickup.
This was not exactly a happy moment. I trudged over to his window.
"I see it's true," he said. He handed me a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the Grabbit Kwik. "Get in the
truck with me."
I climbed in, pleased by the coffee but cautious overall. I put my guard up immediately. It slipped back
into place slowly and painfully, like wiggling back into a girdle that was too tight in the first place.
"I can't say nothing," he told me. "Not after the way I lived my life these past few years. As near as I can
tell, he's your first, isn't he?"
I nodded.
"He treat you good?"
I nodded again.
"I got something to tell you."
"Okay."
"Uncle Bartlett got killed last night."
I stared at him, the steam from the coffee rising between us as I pried the lid off the cup. "He's dead," I
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said, trying to understand it. I'd worked hard never to think of him, and here I thought of him, and the
next thing I heard, he was dead.
"Yep."
"Wow." I looked out the window at the rosy light on the horizon. I felt a surge of freedom. The only
one who remembered besides me, the only one who'd enjoyed it, who insisted to the end that I had
initiated and continued the sick activities he thought were so gratifying ... he was dead. I took a deep
breath.
"I hope he's in hell," I said. "I hope every time he thinks of what he did to me, a demon pokes him in the
butt with a pitchfork."
"God, Sookie!"
"He never messed with you."
"Damn straight!"
"Implying what?"
"Nothing, Sookie! But he never bothered anyone but you that I know of!"
"Bullshit. He molested Aunt Linda, too."
Jason's face went blank with shock. I'd finally gotten through to my brother. "Gran told you that?"
"Yes."
"She never said anything to me."
"Gran knew it was hard for you, not seeing him again when she could tell you loved him. But she couldn't
let you be alone with him, because she couldn't be a hundred percent sure girls were all he wanted."
"I've seen him the past couple of years."
"You have?" This was news to me. It would have been news to Gran, too.
"Sookie, he was an old man. He was so sick. He had prostate trouble, and he was feeble, and he had to
use a walker."
"That probably slowed him down chasing the five-year-olds."
"Get over it!"
"Right! Like I could!"
We glared at each other over the width of the truck seat.
"So what happened to him?" I asked finally, reluctantly.
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"A burglar broke into his house last night."
"Yeah? And?"
"And broke his neck. Threw him down the stairs." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]