The Man Who Hated Ned O'Leary (Dig Two Graves 2)

“Yes,” Ned rasped. “And when my mother went to the pantry for ingredients for your dinner, shaken by the murder of her beloved husband, Tom sneaked in behind her. He promised her she’d live if she stayed silent about what would happen. And then he raped her. As I sat there in impotent terror.”

“What?” Cole looked over his shoulder this time and found Ned staring into the sky, his face tense in the sparse glow of the stars above. Cole hadn’t seen or heard of Tom ever forcing himself on a woman—he had all the charm and money needed to find female company—but as much as he wanted to protest, he had not been there, and Ned had.

Ned had seen what happened and after such a long silence—had no reason to lie. And while Cole had never known Tom as a rapist, the man used to have a bad temper and had sometimes intimidated people just because it gave him pleasure. Perhaps it had been the only time he did something of that sort, but it didn’t make his actions any less condemnable.

He remembered Ned’s confession from years ago, how Ned had thought it was witnessing his mother’s rape that made him numb to affection. Tom had been the perpetrator, and Ned had seen the ordeal. He’d said she hung herself when Ned had been just a boy. Was that how Tom had taken not one parent from Ned but both?

“I’m sorry,” he uttered, staring at the frozen dirt with a dull sensation in his heart. He’d loved Tom like a father, but he’d never been blind to the fact that he was a bad man to anyone but the chosen few he’d considered family. So it seemed even the few rules Tom had claimed to follow had been a sham.

Ned hesitated, breathing the same icy air as Cole. “And then… then you left. With all our food and our two horses. For the first few days, my mother tried to hunt, checked the traps Father had set up before he died, but there was nothing, she was no hunter, and I didn’t manage to get my hands on anything but a few mice either. We were so terribly hungry, and with the snow all around, there was no way for us to leave.

“I don’t know if it was five days or a week into this terrible starvation, but my mother made a rich stew for us. I was so hungry, and it smelled so good… I didn’t ask her where she got the meat, and she didn’t say. But I knew.”

Cole sat up and stared at Ned, nausea rising in his throat as he dug his fingers into the ice cold snow. “She—”

It didn’t need to be voiced. She cooked the flesh of her husband so her child could survive. Anyone would have done it in her situation, yet Cole couldn’t help the sense of revulsion twisting every organ in his body.

What a heavy burden that must have been for a small boy.

Ned wouldn’t look at him. “Yes, she did. We were stuck here for a month, and in that time she spoke less and less. It was as if her soul had left her body on that night Father died. We had a Pawnee friend who’d visit sometimes, and he came by when the snow started thawing. My mother didn’t speak his tongue, but he understood we needed help in getting to other people, and he led us to the valley where my uncle lived. I knew something was wrong on the night she told me he’d take good care of me. She was found hanging in the barn the next day. Maybe it had been the rape, maybe the sorrow for my father, maybe guilt for what we’d done, but she decided she couldn’t live on.”

Cole remained silent.

He didn’t know what he’d expected. Perhaps a long story that revealed the ills of Ned’s character, one that would ensure Cole would hate him until the day he died. But not this. Not this story of assault, murder, and, of all things, cannibalism.

He forced down the lump in his throat and realized that perhaps Ned had been right all along. Maybe Cole didn’t need to know all the painful details, because his heart didn’t feel at ease. It was frozen like the snow surrounding them on each side, and although Tom had been a bastard, it still hurt to find out the extent of his ruthlessness. Tom hadn’t even been honest about the one line he’d claimed to never cross—yet another person in Cole’s life who’d never been truthful.

“So yes,” Ned said with gritted teeth and fists clenched on his knees. “When the Pinkertons came to me, offering a way to bring the Gotham Boys to justice, I took that chance. I just didn’t expect you would happen along the way.”