Page 59 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

I lower myself to the floor beside Zenobia. I wrap my arms around her and bury my nose in her dusty fur, the way I did with Annie when I was young. “I want him to die.”

“I know.”

“No, Sara, I mean—”

“I know exactly what you mean, and that’s why I won’t let you finish your sentence.”

“Grace said it would make me just like him.”

Sara shakes her head. “It’s not the same thing. It’s that if you go back to prison, he wins.”

“He can’t win if he’s dead.”

“Providence Byrd, don’t.”

“I got myself a gun.”

“How?”

“Don’t ask.”

Her eyes simmer white-hot with fury. “If you brought a gun into my house, I swear to God I’ll strangle you right now.”

“It’s not here.”

“Where is it?”

“I’m not telling you.” I send up a silent prayer that the gun is still safe in its half-assed hiding place. What the hell is nursing home protocol for finding a weapon in someone’s room? “If someone comes asking, I don’t want you to know.”

The answer cools her rage to morbid curiosity. She lights a citronella candle on the windowsill. The mosquitoes will swarm soon. “You came here to kill him. That’s why the sheriff wanted to look in your car.”

I nod.

“So what stopped you? Why didn’t you do it?”

I take too long to respond. Sara flits from window to window lighting the citronella candles. “You didn’t really want to, did you? You knew deep down it wouldn’t change anything.”

“It’s not about changing things. If he dies tomorrow, it doesn’t undo every horrible thing he’s done. But if I kill him, I hold him accountable. He answers for his sins.”

“Destroying your life doesn’t hold him accountable.”

But I am scared my life was already destroyed at age seventeen, and I am scared I’m destined to feel like I’m suffocating until my father finally dies. I can’t live like this. It is thesensation I get when I need to bite myself amplified a hundred times over, hot as the glowing coals of a fire, bitter as vinegar.

“I need this feeling to go away,” I say quietly.

“Focus on something else. Focus on helping Harmony.”

“How?”

Sara stoops down beside Augustus, ruffling the fur between his powerful shoulders. It doesn’t rouse him from his deep sleep. His legs twitch like he is dreaming of chasing rabbits through a field. “Finding her a good lawyer, for a start.”

CHAPTER

17

August 19th

9:02AM