Page 19

“Do you work?” she asks.
“Yes. I’m, uh—”
I’m stalling, which I always do before telling someone my flighty, fanciful job. Especially someone like Sam, who carries an aura of lifelong poverty. It’s evident in the runs in her fishnets, her duct-taped boots, her hard eyes. Desperation hums off her like radio waves, shivery and intense.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she says. “I mean, you don’t even know me.”
“I’m a blogger?” It comes out sounding like a question. Like I have no clue what I am. “I have a website. It’s calledQuincy’s Sweets.”
Sam offers a polite half smile. “Cute name. Is it, like, kittens and shit?”
“Baked goods. Cakes, cookies, muffins. I post pictures and decorating tips. Recipes. Tons of recipes. It’s been featured on the Food Network.”
Jesus. Bragging about the Food Network? Even I want to smack myself. But Sam greets it all with a laid-back nod.
“Cool,” she says.
“It can be fun,” I say, finally wrangling my voice to a lower register.
“Why cakes? Why not world hunger or politics or—”
“Kittens and shit?”
This time, Sam’s smile is full and genuine. “Yeah. That.”
“I’ve always liked to bake. It’s one of the few things I’m good at. It relaxes me. Makes me happy. After—” I hesitate again, for a very different reason. “After what happened to me—”
“You mean the Pine Cottage Murders?” Sam says.
At first, I’m surprised she knows the name. Then I realize it’s natural that she would. Just like how I know about the Nightlight Inn.
“Yes,” I say. “After that, when I was living at home, I spent a lot of time baking things for friends and neighbors. Thank-you presents, really. People were so generous. A new casserole every night, for weeks.”
“All that food.” Sam lifts her fingers to her teeth, gnawing at the cuticles. The sleeve of her leather jacket slips, revealing dark ink at her wrist. A tattoo, hidden just out of sight. “It must have been a nice neighborhood.”
“It was.”
Sam catches a hangnail in her teeth, tugs it off, spits it out. “Mine wasn’t.”
Silence follows as questions flicker in my mind. Personal ones Sam might not want to answer. How long did the barbed wire keep you against that tree? How did you get loose? What did it feel like plunging that drill bit into Calvin Whitmer’s heart?
Instead, I say, “Should we talk about what happened to Lisa?”
“You make it sound like we’ve got a choice.”
“We don’t have to.”
“She killed herself,” Sam says. “Of course we do.”
“Why do you think she did it?”
“Maybe she couldn’t take it anymore.”
I know what she means.Itis the guilt, the nightmares, the lingering grief. Most of all,itis the gnawing, unshakable sense that maybe my survival wasn’t meant to be. That I’m nothing more than a desperate, wriggling insect destiny forgot to squash.
“Is Lisa’s suicide why you came out of hiding after all this time?”
Sam levels her gaze at me. “What do you think?”