Page 22 of Lady and the Butcher

I choked on nothing. “Goodnight, Atticus.”

“Goodnight, Lady.”

I fled before my knees made any more choices without me, out of the shadowed edge and back into the gold of the party. The camera flash found me as I slipped in beside Mom. She kissed my temple.

“What was that?” she whispered.

“Nothing,” I lied.

“Mm.” She didn’t believe me and didn’t push. “Smile.”

I did. The shutter clicked. The world did its thing—spun, laughed, sang. For the next hour I let it. I shouted the chorus to a song I hadn’t admitted I liked since college. I watched Stephen blow out candles and pretend he hadn’t made the same wish three years running. I let Alicia tuck a stray curl behind my ear and tell me my eyeliner was holding up against humidity like a champ. I told the twins if they did a cartwheel near the cake table I would disown them publicly. I let Mom sway with me beneath the oaks to a Sinatra track and remembered that my body could be held without also being asked to take care of everything.

And still—through all of it—I felt him at my back. Not close. Not hovering. Just … there. A point on a compass I kept circling toward, even as I dutifully did laps around the party.

When the night finally thinned and people peeled away—hugging, promising brunch, losing shoes in the grass—I found myself at the edge of the brick path that led toward the exit. The air had cooled enough to feel almost kind. I checked my phone one last time.

Nothing.

I wasn’t sure if that was relief or disappointment. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“Lady.”

My head turned before I told it to. He stood a few feet away, hands in his pockets, tie still nonexistent, the cleaver at his throat a dark suggestion under the last of the lights.

“You leaving?” he asked.

“I am,” I said. “I have a class in the morning. Newborn care for first-time dads.”

His mouth curved—there and gone. “Sounds entertaining.”

“It is. Last week a man asked if it was normal for babies to breathe like hamsters.”

“And?”

“It is. Sometimes.”

He stepped closer, nothing dramatic, just another inch that felt like a mile. “You going to be here tomorrow?”

“At the Cistern?” I huffed a laugh. “God, no.”

“In this city.”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He paused. The quiet wrapped around us. “Then, I’ll see you soon.”

“When?” It came out sharper than I meant, the word snagging on every nerve that had been humming since the full moon.

He didn’t answer. Of course, he didn’t. He just looked at me like a decision.

I lifted my chin. “You didn’t answer my earlier question either.”

“Which one?”

“What you are.”

He held my gaze, unblinking. The night seemed to lean in. “Atticus.”