Page 8 of The Butcher's Wife

“Yes.”

A few hours ago, I felt the same sense of injustice. Now, I just feel like a hollowed-out eggshell. I’ve barely eaten in the past few days, and all that exertion sapped away the little energy I had. A headache throbs against my temples. I press my cheek against the cool glass of the car window and my eyelids flutter closed.

Dom’s voice drifts to me like a dream. “I thought you were… never mind.”

I must’ve dozedoff because when I open my eyes again, night has fallen. The outdoor lights illuminate my parents’ walkway, casting long pockets of black shadows in Serafina’sAmsonia. Dom kills the engine, and we both sit in silence—well, almost silence. At some point, he turned the radio on to a low volume. Now it’s just us sitting together and a woman singinglet go, let go, let go.

I should be worried about Dad being stuck in that house with the rest of those men, and I am, but it’s distant. I can’t touch it behind the glass.

For the second time today, Dom startles me as he opens my car door. He gives me a pitying smile. “Come on,fiorellina.”

His nickname for Serafina.Little flower.

I swallow around the lump in my throat, and the secret I’ve been guarding deep inside my heart like a live coal, letting it burn me over and over again, spews out. “It’s my fault.”

I didn’t think—I just ran, but why,whydid I come back home? I could’ve gone anywhere in the world, taken my curse with me, corrupted a town of strangers, and not my family. Not my sister.

Instead, I was too stupid and scared. I left in a blind panic, looking only behind me, without considering the future consequences. They came anyway, just not to me—to Serafina, when she was mistakenly murdered in my place.

My headache hammers every thought into my brain, driving them into place.

Selfish.

Foolish.

Useless.

The grief swells inside me, pressing against the underside of my skin until it breaks, and I bury my head in my hands with a sob.

I barely notice Dom unbuckling me as I hide my face and my shame from him.

“It’s not your fault,” he declares, like he could say anything less to a grieving woman.

I sob harder.

He’s wrong. Itismy fault, and I don’t even have the decency to weep for the loss of the bright, innocent soul that was my sister. I grieve for myself, for the guilt that coats me like a layer of black tar.

Only my parents know. They blame me. And they’re right to.

I curl up in a ball and sob in the passenger seat for a long time while Dom, one of the few good men I know, bears witness to the lowest point in my life.

Never have I been so ugly and worthless.

After a long time, I’m spent again. I crumple against myself like a used tissue paper. Even grief has its limits.

“Serafina?”

Something halfway between a laugh and a sob bubbles out of me. Every single time I hear her name directed at me, it’s a knife to the chest. It’s the least I deserve.

Dom takes my boneless hand in his. I rotate my limbs to the right and tumble out of the car, expecting to fall onto the concrete, but he catches me with an effortless athletic grace. Everything’s so easy for him.

I don’t allow myself the chance to enjoy the sensation of being carried in his arms. I lie in his grasp with all the emotion of a wooden log and close my eyes against the sight of his handsome face. I don’t deserve this.

“What happened?” Mom asks with a slurred edge.

“She’s okay. Barbara’s still at the house.”

Mom scrapes her shoe against the marble before my hand is clutched in hers and I’m buried in a cloud of Pinot Grigio. She squeezes me, but she doesn’t ask any painful questions. That’s not how our relationship works.