The cafe is called Lili’s.
I duck inside and navigate past the ridiculous line at the register, trying not to breathe in the scent of food, of caffeine. I feel like I never want to eat again. I feel like if I don’t eat something soon, I won’t make it much further. My body is trembling, tremoring, and I’m freezing, even though it’s hot, my teeth chattering. I don’t know how to make this go away. I need to make it go away. I slip into the bathroom and sink-wash myself in frustrating stop-starts as women filter in and out. I just. Want to be clean. I use the cheap floral soap and gritty paper towels to rub a weak lather over my arms and legs with my shaking hands. The dirt from the house washes away, leaving a mishmash of tiny cuts on my shins that I didn’t notice from my trek through the grass. I slip my hand up my shirt, cleaning the sweat from under my breasts. My hair has about another day left in it before I have to find some way to wash it. I twist it into a tight bun. I lean forward against the sink and let out a sob, whispering okay, okay, okay, until I feel its cold porcelain beneath my fingers.
He took Darren under his wing, sort of, just made a point of being nice to him. Fucking Marlee. He took Darren under his—
Fucking Marlee. Silas could sense it, I bet, that same sick soul lurking underneath, someone he could share himself with. He was just better at hiding it than Keith was. But Marlee had to have known it, she had to. I don’t talk to my brother anymore. Why else would she give up the only relationship she had with the one person who could bankroll her? I pound my fist against the sink because there’s nothing else in here I can hit. She. Knew.
And now I know.
I run my hand over my mouth. My eyes are wide and wild and I can’t see myself beyond them. I can only see what they’ve seen.
Do I kill him?
Do I kill Silas Baker?
I stole Keith’s switchblade the night Mom kicked him out.
That night didn’t end how it was supposed to, in a lot of ways, but I thought I could kill him when I was half the girl I am now, a coltish thing. Or maybe I didn’t think I would kill him—maybe I was too young to imagine anything so final, so irreversible—but I wanted to hurt him badly enough to make him afraid of me the way I needed.
The way he should be afraid of me now.
He kept the blade on the nightstand in Mom’s bedroom next to his Bible. Once, a few weeks after he moved in, he called me in and sat me on his lap and showed it to me. Sadie, look at this, he’d said, and I watched the blade flick out of its handle before I realized it was a knife. That’s the business end, he’d said, and pointed to its tip. I don’t wanna ever see this in your hands, you hear me?
I dip my hand into my pocket, letting my fingertips drift over its contours and remember how it looked in my grasp when my hands were much smaller. It almost didn’t make sense. I was surprised, when I pulled it on Caddy, how much it belonged.
I can’t move through this town and leave it the way I found it.
I press my fingers to my forehead.
I have to stop it.
But Keith.
But wait.
A woman comes in. I turn to her, my mind racing. She’s middle-aged, with dark black skin. She very sweetly asks me if I’m okay. I tell her I’m fine and ask if I can use her phone. It comes out of my mouth more fractured than usual, the stress of everything worsening my stutter. She says, “Of course,” in the softest voice and something about it further breaks me and I don’t know if it’s the relief that kindness can exist in this world or the guilt of kindness existing in a world that doesn’t deserve it. I call Javi. He picks up on the third ring, his voice thick with sleep, and I ask him to meet me here and he says quickly, excitedly, yeah, yeah, I’ll be right there, don’t go anywhere. The woman smiles at me as I pass the phone back to her.
I step back into the café, waiting near the door, picking at one of my fingernails until it bleeds. Javi arrives eight minutes later, trying for all the world to look casual, but I can tell by his heaving chest he must have run here. There’s a vaguely sick pall to his skin and a vaguely boozy scent to his sweat. Remains of last night.
Last night feels so far from me now.
“Hi,” he says and I can’t bring myself to return his smile. He doesn’t notice. He leans back on his heels, eyes drifting to the registers before clapping his hands together. Everything he says next comes out rushed, nervous: “It’s still kind of early to head over to Noah’s. We could give ’em a minute to wake up, that sound okay? I haven’t even eaten breakfast. You hungry? Let’s eat. It’s on me. What’ll you have?”
I don’t want to eat.
I have to eat.
If this were a normal situation, I wonder if I’d try to be delicate about it, if I’d pretend to be a girl with a dainty appetite, or more appealing, none at all. I tell him I want their protein snack box and their most calorie-laden smoothie in its largest size and he can’t mask the surprise on his face, but he recovers quickly and makes the order. Soon enough, we have our food and wedge ourselves into a table in the back corner of the café, as far from the bustle as possible, at my request. Javi matches my appetite with his order, but eats in a way that suggests he wasn’t that hungry. He’s even shyer, more uncertain than he was, now that he’s sober.
I stare at my meal, my stomach turning at the thought of it, but I have to eat.
I have to eat if I want to do anything next.
I close my eyes briefly, and then I slip a piece of apple into my mouth and carefully chew it into a paste and then I realize that I can’t taste it. It’s nothing on my tongue. I ignore my rising panic and take another bite of apple, trying to force myself to reach past everything that’s wrong to something crisp, sweet and fresh.
After an agonizing moment, its flavor seeps into my taste buds and then it’s too sweet.
I never used to like apples.
May Beth said when I was little, an only child, I was always hungry, starving, arms reaching for food and even then, I was still picky. She said I only understood sugar and grease and if she tried to give me anything good enough to grow bones, I’d cry until my eyes were so swollen, I couldn’t see. In those moments, she’d trick me; put pieces of apple on my tongue and call them candy. It wasn’t long before I caught on and bit her hard enough to draw blood. But then Mattie came along and May Beth said she’d end up pickier than me if I didn’t set a better example and did I want to see my little sister aching for food?
I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less.
“Can I ask you something?”
I place a piece of cheese on my tongue and it sits in my mouth. I have to take a long drink of the smoothie to force it down.
“S-sure.”
He leans forward, his eyes searching my face.
“What’s wrong, Lera?”
“L-let me eat,” I tell him. “L-let me f-finish eating f-first.”
He sits there awkwardly, patiently, while I work through the breakfast he’s bought me. It’s an awful, absurd exercise in self-preservation, putting the food in my mouth, consciously instructing myself to swallow, because if I don’t it will just sit there. All this production just to make it to the next moment. Javi gives me a small smile and I hear his voice, last night, over the din in the bar: Their dad was my T-ball coach.
Sometimes, I feel made of Mattie’s absence, this complete emptiness inside me and the only thing that makes it bearable, that quiets it, is moving, is putting distance between her murder and pushing myself closer to the promise of taking Keith’s life. It still hurts, though. It always hurts. Other times, I can only feel the weight of it, all of it, of every Sadie I’ve been, every choice that she’s made, and everything she could have possibly gotten so wrong that she’d end up here. Now. Like this. Alone.
I get halfway through the smoothie before my stomach finally says no more and then I grasp the edge of the table, fighting the utter rejection my body wants to do of normal, automatic things. I remember the last time I felt this way. After Mattie died.
“Lera.” Javi reaches across the table and puts his hand on my arm. “What is it?”