Page 99 of Lady and the Butcher

“Useful,” Stephen said, voice rough with victory.

“Occasionally,” Atticus said. His mouth tilted in that scarce smile he wore like a private joke.

Alicia stood, walked to him, and stopped close without touching. “Thank you,” she said, and the words had weight.

He gave one short nod, eyes steady on hers. “You’ll keep him from doing something stupid the second he feels good.”

“That’s the plan,” she said.

We didn’t make a big deal of leaving. We never do. Atticus squeezed my hand once in the elevator—bone, tendon, heat—and that was the only way the day said yes out loud.

Back at The Nesting Place, the bell over the door chimed like it had been missing me and wanted to prove it. The front windows threw rectangles of light across the polished floor. Mei had rearranged the display by the register, and the shelves looked like they’d been given a pep talk. She wore her hair up with two pencils stuck through like chopsticks and a look that saiddon’t argue with me.

“You’re back,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She gave me a once-over that women give other women when words would be inefficient. “Counts?”

“Up.”

Her eyes went shiny and she blinked hard. “Good. It’s been on my mind all morning.”

I nodded. “Cameras?”

She jerked her chin toward the corner. “Two more. Reese swapped the firmware, and I changed the angles. We’ll catch anyone who even breathes on our glass.”

“Any sign of baseball cap?”

“None.” She leaned closer. “I think we’re good.”

“Mei.”

“What?”

“Thank you.”

I stepped behind the counter and touched the worn groove where the register drawer sticks if you don’t finesse it. Normal. Ordinary. The kind of friction a life can live with. I breathed in the shop smell—cardboard, fabric, that faint citrus-cleaner note—and my shoulders lowered a full inch.

A woman I recognized from town came in to exchange a gift. She apologized three times for not having the right receipt. I told her it was fine and meant it. Someone else asked about an out-of-stock order and frowned when I said Thursday. Mei slid me a sticky note that said eat, and I slid it back with a smiley face that looked like it had been drawn by a drunk child. For an hour we were two women running a small business and not guardians of a border between light and knives.

Atticus didn’t come in. I could feel him, anyway, in the way my nervous system had rewritten itself to include the possibility of his presence at my back. No blue lights out front. No shadows leaning on the glass. Just a man in a black SUV somewhere nearby, shutting doors.

When the lunch lull hit, Mei leaned her hip against the counter. “You told him what you needed?”

“I did.”

“He listened?”

“He did.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Good. I like him when he’s useful.”

That evening, the air over Charleston tasted like summer pretending to be polite. Atticus took me to the water where the Ashley moves like a thought you haven’t said yet. The sky was that soft bruise color the city wears beautifully. Boats stitched lazy diagonals across the river, and every gull in the county had decided to show up.

He parked under live oaks that had seen more history than any book. We walked without touching. It wasn’t distance. It was charge, and we knew better than to waste it.

“What’s closed?” I asked finally, because someone had to put a voice to it.

He didn’t answer right away. He watched a boat cut a ribbon through water. He watched until the wave kissed back at the bank and receded.

“Everything that needed my hand,” he said. “The parts that asked me to be the knife.” He glanced at me. “I won’t be that anymore.”