Much managed to hold it together till he was on his knees in the garden out the back, roughing up the dirt a little with his finger to give Pippi's worm a nice easy place to burrow.
We should have buried him the thought came and stood over him. Shouldn't have rung John, shouldn't have risked getting anyone else involved and now Marcie was.
What had they done? Killed the Sheriff, yes. But Marcie had told him she hadn't been sleeping in her own place for a while, and Much remembered the first time they'd met, Marcie asking him how long it could take immortals to come back from the dead and...
Much remembered how weirdly, uncannily bonding the experience of cleaning up Tuck and watching over him had been.
And he'd done that, to Marcie, by killing the Sheriff.
Barely breathing, he messaged Will, waiting for the worm to fully disappear into the soil, trying not to be sick. Or cry.
He couldn't go back inside yet. Last Sunday, after the Sheriff's visit, he'd fled inside hoping for some breathing room and everyone had goddamn followed him. He couldn't go back in and deal with Tuck and Marian right now. He just needed a few minutes. Maybe a reply from Will. Maybe just a bit of silence. So he trudged in through the back of the church to sit.
And there was Tuck. Of course. Much's shaky exhale from the back of the church was audible, stupid church acoustics, not that his clomping footsteps hadn't been. "Hey," he said flatly.