Page 57 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

“She didn’t do it!”

“I think she stopped taking her meds and—”

She cuts me off. “Why won’t you listen to me?”

“What do you know that I don’t?”

“Harmony would never hurt Mom,” she says. “I know it in my bones, Providence. And she wouldn’t have—she wouldn’t have gone to the searches and faked it. She isn’t like that. She can’t bullshit anyone, and—and she has mental health problems, okay? She isn’t well, but she’s not a sociopath.”

“Who did it then?”

The question takes her aback. “What?”

“If you don’t think she did it, then who did?”

“I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t it make sense if it’s Dad?”

The question is a miscalculation. My visceral hatred toward him is something I share only with Harmony. The pain is different when you are no longer consumed by it. It becomes sharper as the years wear on, like a knife dragged across a whetstone a hundred times. I see it as proof of hindsight being twenty-twenty. I know now that my father is a villain, that I was horribly mistreated, that I did not deserve one single night without food or palm to the cheek or hand on my breast, but in the moment, I could always find a way to blame myself. It didn’t matter why my imperfections were punished so sadistically: they were still imperfections, and all imperfections were worthy of punishment.

She immobilizes me with a scornful stare. The muscles in her face twitch as she clenches her jaw. “I don’t even want to think about that.”

“I’m only saying it’s the easiest answer.”

“The easiest answer is my dad killing my mom?”

I stop myself from saying yes. “Isn’t it easier than Harmony doing it?”

Grace stubs out the cigarette in her melting mound of ice cream. Each time she opens her mouth to speak, she snaps it shut again.

“This can all be over,” I say, “if we could find a way to show people he did it.”

“What happens to me if he goes to prison? I’m a minor. Everyone’s dead. We don’t have any aunts or uncles or grandparents. Do I end up in foster care?”

“Someone would … Harmony would take care of you.”

“She can’t take care of herself,” she whispers.

“I would take care of you then.”

She has less confidence in those words than I do. She knows I would be a piss-poor substitute for a family. A feeble nod is her only acknowledgement of the offer before gazing into the distance, watching a young couple unload a horde of children from a minivan. Their triple-wide stroller barrels across the gravel parking lot like a tank. “How did Harmony say she did it?”

“With the car. She won’t tell the cops where it is though.”

“Because she didn’t do it.”

“I don’t think she can take back a confession, Grace.”

“You said she stopped taking her meds, right? She—she’s not in her right mind.” Her pitch grows higher, her tone more frenetic as she assembles an alibi for Harmony. “You have to tell them that. The last time she stopped taking them, she tried to kill herself. She was talking to herself all the time, and she—I bet they can call her psychiatrist and read all their notes. You have to tell them how much she needs the meds.”

“Maybe you should tell them.”

“How?”

“We can go to the sheriff’s office. Maybe you can talk to Harmony and—”

She shakes her head. “Please don’t make me go there.”