Page 114 of My Girl

“What do you want to do?” I respond.

Her eyes flick across mine, but her decision is instant. She squeezes my hands, then she trots toward the bar. She sits beside her mother. I sit on the other side of my girl.

“What are you drinking?” my girl asks. “It looks good.”

“Just a Hurricane,” Samantha says. She pauses to scrutinize my girl’s face. She briefly scans me too, but turns back to the woman beside her, the one she shares blood with. There must be an instinct there—a primal reaction to that shared connection, years of nurturing, betrayal, and loss.

A world has passed between them. Samantha thinks her daughter is dead, but she’s looking at her. If you consider the timing—about a year since her daughter “died”—this vacation could be a way for the mother to grieve for her late daughter.

“Do I—” the mother starts. She shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “You just remind me of someone.”

The smile fades from my girl’s lips. “I get that a lot.”

My girl orders the same thing as Samantha, using that as an excuse to make small talk. Warmth crawls over my skin, watching my girl in action. You would think that the woman who raised her would anticipate the tricks coming to the surface, but the mother takes shots with my girl like they’re best friends.

A while later, we leave the mother at the bar. My girl and I stroll the beach, our bare feet dragging in the white sand.

“What did you see in her?” my girl finally asks.

“A warm hole,” I answer.

She snickers. “Then what do you see in me?”

“Anentertainingwarm hole.”

She punches me in the arm. I grin, then pull her into my embrace. I take in every part of her. The crooked nose. The scar on her brow. The bleach-blonde hair, with the roots of her natural color. Her brown eyes, so much like mine.

“I see my possession,” I say. “My blood.” I pull her chin up until she’s staring into my eyes. “I see me.”

There were twenty-five years where neither of us spoke a word to each other, where I kept my distance so that she could grow into the person she was meant to be, and yet every day feels like we’ve always been this way. Me and her. Daddy and his little girl. Two fucked-up people from the same bloodline.

My girl could have been good, like her mother. Instead, she chose a life like mine. Being like me—selfish, manipulative, and dark—was always her decision.

“You said you didn’t want kids,” my girl says. “Didn’t.”

“Do you want kids?” I ask.

She glances back at her mother, sitting at the bar, the resort towering behind her, so much like the Galloway House. You can protect yourself from nature’s destruction inside of a building, but you’re never really safe. The people inside, living right next to you, are the ones you have to fear the most. You never know who you’re sitting next to, who may share your blood, who may want you dead.

“No,” my girl says. “But you need to explain yourself. You said that youdidn’twant kids. Did something change?”

My girl looks up at me, demanding answers. I know exactly what this is: she wants confirmation that I wanthernow.

We’re not the kind of couple that says that we love each other. Love isn’t what we have. But the fact that we’ve spared each other, that she wears my cremated flesh on her wedding finger, that she has my scar marking her face,that’sour dedication to each other. We’re selfish beyond desire. Weowneach other.

And one day, her violent hunger will reach new heights. That’s when she’ll finally kill me. I can’t fucking wait.

“I’m never letting you go,” I say. “You know that.”

She nods, satisfied with my answer. Then she twirls her hair. “I still don’t understand why you haven’t killed her.”

“You’ve got that poison, don’t you?” I ask.

She opens her purse, showing me a small perfume bottle. It twinkles in the sunset. All it would take is going back to that beach bar and putting a few drops into her mother’s drink. Her mother would never notice. It would seem like an allergic reaction.

“You wantmeto do it,” she says.

“I like watching you.”