The bullet hit the ground next to Tanner and Amelia Rose. Aiden's heart jolted. He couldn't believe he'd done it. The sand sprayed in the air as the bullet buried its way deep into the soft ground. Tanner let go of Amelia Rose and she fell on her rear end. She stared up at Aiden, eyes filled with shock. Tanner picked his knife off the driftwood log on which he'd been sitting. His face reddened, his teeth clenched with anger. He charged towards Aiden, the knife extended.

"No! Stop!" Amelia Rose screamed. Aiden glanced at her. His grip slackened.

But it was all over. Aiden had made his choice. He couldn't go back on it now. He squeezed the trigger once more. The gun rattled in his hand and the bullet spiraled out of the barrel in a discharge of smoke. It smelled like sulfur, like a dark must that worked itself up from the cellar and hid in the walls until you couldn't bear it anymore. It roared and roared on; a great engine, an earthquake, a puff of smoke and fire. The gun stilled, and his fingers fell numb. He dropped it.

Aiden shot Tanner right between the eyes. He staggered, dead, then collapsed face-first into the sand. Aiden joined him, his legs weakening with every passing second. He slumped onto his knees. Tanner's body was heavy. When Aiden tried to roll it over, it required more strength than he had bargained for.

"Oh my gods..." Aiden trailed off. "Oh my gods."

The dread began to fill him. He had only seen death a few times, but never like Tanner.  Never dealt by his own hand. Tanner's eyes were open and dimmed to the color of a sodden glacier. They held Aiden's gaze regardless of where he attempted to hide.

A sooty black ash clung to Tanner's forehead. The blood whelmed from the sides of his wound and slowly poured down the bridge of his nose. It scaled the slopes of his eyelids and mingled with the expanseless blue before trying to find a way back out. Then it rolled down, down his sunken cheeks and up his hollow forehead until it formed a thick, clotting war paint. The blood drained into the sand. It was too much to sink, so it slowly migrated towards the lapping ocean waves.

Aiden pushed at Tanner's shoulder. Once and once more. "Tanner! Tanner, come on." He didn't stir, but Aiden couldn't believe he was dead either.

Amelia Rose and Aiden turned their eyes back to each other at the same time. She began to tremble violently. She pushed herself off the ground with weak legs and began to run, but the sand swallowed her feet and dragged her down. Her white dress was dirty. She collapsed into a tight ball and wept. Aiden fell onto his back in the sand and looked at the stars. They began to twist and turn and stumble and orbit. Something was spinning. Maybe the sky was spinning, or the ground was spinning, or he was spinning all in his head. The two of them laid there for some time.

"Who are you?" Amelia Rose asked. She had stopped crying some time ago, but her breath was still in tatters.

"You know who I am," Aiden said softly because his throat burned from breathing so hard.

"You killed him!" A cry escaped her, but she tried her hardest to curb her emotions.

"You think you could change him." he said, shaking his head. His hand fumbled for the gun. It was still warm to the touch. He jammed it into his boot.

"Of course! How can you...how can you be so simple to believe that nobody changes?" she said, "You. Maybe you cannot change, but him—"

"He was fucked." He forced out a grating breath. "And you should believe it. He was going to hit you."

"Mr. Tanner?" she asked and drew another long pause. It lasted for hours, it seemed. "You don't know him like I do. He's not the same person he is to you. He's crude, he's boorish, but he wants so much to be good." She was wrong, Aiden thought. Tanner wanted no part of being better. He had tortured and disrespected Aiden for years.

"You can't have these projects—you can't fix people. They're either broken or they're your kind of broken."

Aiden began to retch. He staggered over to the sea and vomited at the smell of blood. He collapsed on his knees as the tide found a way into his soles. Amelia Rose cupped her hands around her face and closed her eyes. "I will testify," she said. "I'll say it was self-defense on your account."

Aiden turned around and looked at her. "Why would you do that?"

"Leave the body undisturbed. We'll go to the sheriff."

"Why?" Aiden raised his voice, jumping back onto his feet.

"Because I'm selfish!" She grabbed two handfuls of hair and tugged at her scalp. "He—he would have never ended it—the marriage."

"I thought I was the villain here." Aiden covered his eyes with his palms but they were shaking.

"You don't understand. Oh, oh my gods. This must be a nightmare. I can't possibly—" She wept silently, only making noise with each shallow breath she drew in between her teeth. "I feel so guilty, but I feel so relieved. It's horrible."

"I'm burying him," Aiden said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his wrist.

"No. No! We have to go see the sheriff. The knife's still in his hand we can say he—"

"It's done, Ms. Wagner. I'm burying him." Aiden stepped across the beach back to Tanner. He tried not to look as he reached down for his hands. They were still lukewarm. Strange. Strange that he could just feel the life leaving.

Amelia Rose stared at Aiden for a moment before tears began to roll down her cheeks, "You need to leave Aydesreve. If you will not put this into the hands of the sheriff, then you need to leave. My father has a dory docked just up the shoreline. Take it. Leave," she said.

Aiden nodded "Go back home before someone looks for you." Aiden tugged at a handful of his dirty blonde hair.

Amelia Rose didn't say anything. She simply crumbled to the ground on her knees and rubbed her eyes with her fingers. Aiden walked over to Tanner and looked at him one last time. All of his veins had risen to the top of his skin. He was pulsing. He thought Tanner might lunge forward and pull him down, but he was dead; fully and thoroughly dead. Aiden held him by his boots. They were slippery and thin with long pointed toes on each foot. He dragged Tanner out of the cove, leaving long red tracks in the sand. A step too large sent Aiden tumbling over onto his back. A rock smashed into his shoulder blade. On the fog-covered ground, Tanner's spindly legs tangled with his. Aiden thrashed until he turned on his side and freed himself. He got up and pulled Tanner all down the coast until he couldn't see Amelia Rose anymore. Sweat rolled off his eyelashes. He never wanted to see her again.

There was a small inlet where red rocks formed caverns. Aiden pushed Tanner into the inlet to hide him while he thought of what to do. He didn't have the energy to dig a grave for Tanner. They'd find him, surely. Aiden looked out. The beach at low tide was sheltered by two sandbars. They always warned the children not to traipse about that beach because it was a lot like a lobster trap: you could get into the ocean through the staggered break in the bar, but the riptide made it impossible to get back in. But that made it all seem so easy. All Aiden could do was pray that he wouldn't wake up the next morning and see that man floating about the coast like a buoy.

The docks were down the beach, about eighty feet away; quite the jaunt for Aiden. Tanner was all of his size and taller. It would be easier to take the boat to the body. When Aiden got to the docks, there was only one dory named The Isabella Soledad. He thought Amelia Rose might be a bit miffed if he hauled a dead body into her father's boat, but he hadn't another choice. He couldn't bury Tanner. With him rotting under Aiden's feet, he'd never sleep. Aiden left the dock and paddled down the shoreline.

When he got back, he pulled the boat up onto the shoreline. Tanner was swaying back and forth in the inlet. The skin around his lips and eyes were turning up a deeper shade of lavender. A golden necklace ascended in the water from around his neck and caught a glimmer of the moon. Aiden leaned in to get a better look at it. It was smooth, simple, and remarkably well taken care of, the charm at the end in the shape of the constellation Crux. It was important in navigation and in meaning, very spiritual. Aiden wiped a tear away with his wrist and tucked the necklace back into Tanner's coat.

He threw his dead boss into The Isabella Soledad. Tanner's hand hung over the side of the boat, dripping water, and pulling in a greenish hue. Aiden pushed the boat off the shoreline and paddled toward the sandbar. Maybe he'd venture out as far as he could, throw Tanner in the rip tide and then keep on going, far as he could.

But whatever the plan was, he didn't have much time at all. The moon dipped lower in the sky; the hours of night were draining away. Moonlight shimmered across the low fog. Aiden kept paddling while Tanner kept his bloodstained eyes on him throughout the trip.