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6

J udith dresses my leg wound as if she’s done it before, her touch quick and gentle even as the antiseptic burns. When she finishes, she tells me to lay on my belly, and she does the same with the angry red lines her husband carved into my back.

“I take it he never did this to you,” I say into the carpet.

She presses a soft, cool pad of astringent between my shoulder blades, and I suck air in through my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut against the pain.

“No,” she says.

I tilt my head to lay my cheek against the carpet. It hurts, having her clean the wounds, even if I can tell she’s being gentle, and a hot tear streaks down along the side of my nose.

“You ever guess he could do something like this?” I ask.

“Not until I saw what was in the bomb shelter.”

“That was a bomb shelter?” I try to push up, but Judith presses me down again, tsking softly.

“Yes. I knew he was doing something down there, but I didn’t think—” She stops and presses more gauze against my back. The pain flares briefly and then fades as she pulls her hand away. “I thought I would have seen it in him.”

“Well, you know, they can hide it.” I hesitate for a moment, then say, “I see it a lot, in my line of work.”

“You see a lot of murderers in your line of work?”

I can’t see her face, but I can hear the teasing in her voice. I scowl, staring at the fire. “No, shitty men. I’m an exotic dancer. And a—well, sometimes I’ll do a little more. For the right price, you know.”

“Is that how Kenneth got ahold of you?” There’s no judgment in her question. No curl of jealousy. Her fingers keep dancing softly over my wounds.

“Yeah.” I tense, waiting for some kind of retaliation. Her palm to dig into a particularly bad cut, something like that. But it never happens. She keeps cleaning my skin, keeps applying the bandages. And I keep getting lulled into a sense of safety that I really shouldn’t be feeling.

“I’m sorry.”

“About me being a whore?”

Judith’s hand pauses. “No,” she says stiffly. “That you’re in this situation at all.”

“But you’re gonna kill him, right? Avenge me?” I twist around, hoping I can get a glimpse of her face. Because I haven’t forgotten that she said that. I’m sure she doesn’t mean it literally. She can’t possibly.

Judith lifts her eyes to meet mine. God, they’re so green. There’s a girl at the Red Blossom who has eyes like that, which is funny, because Judith’s nothing like her. Judith’s nothing like anyone I’ve met.

“We are going to kill him,” she says smoothly. “You can avenge yourself.”

I keep staring at her, even though it’s awkward, twisted around like this. And she doesn’t break my gaze.

“You’re fucking serious.”

Judith smiles. “I am.”

I laugh, sharp and hysterical. “How?” I say. “How are the two of us going to—going to kill someone?”

“Do you mean that logistically or ethically?”

I blink. The question’s hazy because my thoughts are still hazy. “Both?”

Judith, ever so gently, tilts my head so I’m resting my cheek on the carpet again.

“Logistically,” she says. “We have a week to plan. But my initial thought was that we’ll let him think I never found you. Then we can trap him in the bomb shelter and use his own weapons against him.”

Judith says all this as if she’s planning a goddamn dinner party.

“Ethically?” She pauses. “Well. I suppose that’s a little trickier.”

“You think?” I stare at the fire as she goes back to tending my cuts. She doesn’t respond, just keeps cleaning and wrapping my back, and doesn’t say a word until a single, firm, “Done.”

I push up, shaking, to my hands and knees, then slump down on the carpet with my wrapped leg jutting out in front of me. Earlier, I had put on the old, loose linen pants she brought me, the stupid things more expensive than any item of clothing in my closet, but I had to be topless for her to take care of my back. I’m used to it, sitting around with my tits out.

But Judith seems uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than she was in the bomb shelter, which gives me a weird crawling sensation. She keeps trying not to look at me and failing. It reminds me of those johns who at least try to be a little respectful.

“Here’s your sweater,” she says, holding it out to me with her eyes averted. “It should be big enough to account for the bandages.”

I take it from her but don’t put it on, just squeeze it like a stuffed animal. The fabric is astonishingly soft, with a kind of velvety fluffiness. “You can look at me.”

Judith lifts her green eyes to my face.

“Nudity’s not the problem here,” I add.

“No.” She looks away, cheeks turning pink. “No, of course not.”

I must be going fucking crazy because I think it’s cute, how shy she is. I’ve never been around a shy woman before, and I have this thought out of nowhere, that I wish she’d been the one to come to the Red Blossom and pay for a few hours at the Sunrise Tide instead of her piece of shit husband.

I slip the sweater on, tugging it down gently over my bandages. It’s like wearing a warm, soft cloud, and I keep petting the fabric, astonished by how soft it is.

“It’s cashmere,” Judith says suddenly. “I thought you might like it.”

“Seriously?” I laugh, not because it’s funny but because I can’t believe it. “You brought me a fucking cashmere sweater? What if I bleed on it?”

She shrugs. “You deserve something nice after what my husband did to you.”

“You don’t even know all that he did to me.”

Judith looks right at me, and that shyness, that sweetness, is gone, replaced with a kind of burning blackness that shudders right to my core. For a moment, I see her husband, his face twisted and splattered with blood, and I realize I can see her the same way.

Just—not directed at me.

“No,” Judith says, “But none of this is unfamiliar to me.”

Terror turns my blood to ice. “You told me you didn’t what he was.”

“I didn’t.”

“Then how can any of this be not unfamiliar to you?”

Judith looks away, and I can see she’s hesitating to answer, which doesn’t do much to ease my fear.

“I grew up in a place, in a family, where—” Judith hesitates again. “Where this sort of thing was common.”

A chill vibrates down my spine. “I don’t get it.”

Judith takes a deep breath, her chest rising and falling. “I grew up in a family of murderers,” she says. “I tried to escape them. Instead, I wound up—” She cuts herself off, and I have no fucking idea what to say to any of this. “Well, you know who I wound up with.”

She looks at me again, and there’s that fire in her gaze, so bright that I feel it, too.

“Have you killed someone before?” I whisper.

Judith doesn’t move. “Yes.”

I suck in my breath and fight the urge to run out into the snow. She might have given me wool pants and a cashmere sweater, but I’m still barefoot and weak and starving.

“Many people,” she adds, as if that makes it better rather than worse. “Most of them probably didn’t deserve it.” Judith’s eyes narrow. “But Kenneth does.”

I can’t breathe. I knew there was something fucked up about her.

So why aren’t I running?

“That’s how I know I can kill Kenneth,” Judith adds. “And how I know you have the right to your revenge.”

I stare at her, my fear burning away into something else. Because let’s be honest: she’s giving me something I fantasized about more than once in the last three days. After he left me, bleeding and aching, the images would play over and over in my head: Biting his ear off while he was inside me, then grabbing one of his blades and gutting him open. Cutting off his dick. Slicing out his tongue. Breaking his legs and whipping his back the way he whipped mine.

But I knew that if I tried any of it, I’d be dead.

“You’re serious about this,” I say, soft and shaky.

“I am,” Judith’s eyes flash, and her hand drops down to her belly. “Know this, Gloria: I’m going to kill him regardless of what you want. When he’s dead, you can go. I’ll be long gone. I know how to hide from the cops.”

She stands tall and firm. She doesn’t look like an elegant housewife. She looks like a goddess of rage, strong and terrifying, ringed by the light of the fire.

“Why the fuck would I go to the cops?” I finally say.

And at that, Judith only smiles.