While Molly has pulled over a cane chair, I’m sitting cross-legged on the timber floor of the porch. Why? I don’t know. It feels good to gaze out across their backyard toward the old fence. Flowerbeds add splotches of red and purple. Somewhere, far away, a donkey is hee-hawing.
Revenant always did have a few people pretending to befarmers. One Easter, a chicken wandered into our house and laid an egg in a shoebox. I smile at the memory.
“So, it’s tea for breakfast?”
She ducks her head and looks about as if we might be raided or something. “Good for the sex organs. Well, it might be?”
That makes me chuckle.
Considering Ron is still armed, we do have a deterrent should Kail return. Ron has parked his wheelchair at a table behind us.
Kail…
“Did I do that wrong? Shooing him away with guns?” And harsh words.
“You’re asking me, dear? I know nothing.” She flaps her hand when I glance up at her. “Apart from the Collider’s general strangenesses.”
“But he is one of those. A strangeness. Dad wrote me a note that said the institute was aiming to make special soldiers out of parts. Called them frankenstructs.” I shudder. Even saying it makes chills run up my arms and down my spine.
“I heard you say that. Well now. That’s quite the piece of knowledge.Hmmm.Sounds to me like occult magic not science. As for shooing, I don’t know if what we did wasright,but he looked dangerous.”
“And mean? Did he look that?”
“Can’t say I saw any meanness. No, Hailey, he did not look mean. Just confused and big and … andhurt? Surprised myself, saying that.”
Hurt? Fuck.My lip has ended up bunched under a corner of my teeth. I let it uncurl.
Not mean. But he was a monster. How could a stitched-together man be anything but? “He never denied what I accused him of.”
And I haven’t told them about how Kail removed that other man from my door in the middle of the night. That adds a different flavor to this.
Ron interjects, “Nope. He did not deny he was a monster.”
“Dayum.” I sigh. “I did do wrong. He could have murdered me earlier, and he didn’t.”
I lay in bed with him all night, let him inside me, and he didn’t harm me, unless I count having an amazing orgasm that blew my mind for a few seconds. I prop my elbow on my knee and smoosh my hand over my face.
“Understandable. You were scared. He wasn’t what you thought he was.” Molly reaches over to pat my shoulder. “We still don’t know who he is. Not really. Tell me though, if it ain’t prying. You think your dad was murdered, Hailey?”
“Yes.” Saying that out loud hits me in the gut with a new dollop of sadness mingled with a pinch of despair. “I want to figure out who would do that.”
“So…you don’t want me to shoot that sewn-up man if he comes here again?” Ron asks.
Sewn-upmakes me think of Kail lying under a sewing machine.I shouldn’t laugh at that. Besides, it’s a good question. “I don’t know. Guess not?”
Here I am trusting Molly and Ron, and I barely know anything except they are good neighbors, and they have weapons as well as the cane and wheelchair.
“You need some food too. Let me make you something then you are going to come into town with us, today, to our shop.”
What if whoever meant to murder me finds me there? It’llbe public, that should be a deterrent? I open my mouth, unsure of what to say or do.
Molly tsks, raises a finger.
“Say nothing. I demand this. We’re not leaving you alone. It’s unsafe. Plus, you will love the pastries from the bakery across the street. And again, if it isn’t too private, we should talk about this whole murder business. We know people in Revenant andmightbe able to do someenquiries for you,” Molly enunciates that like it’s important then smirks and leans back in her chair.
I eye her over the cup’s edge while I hold it in two hands and carefully sip the hot tea. If I do this, I have to tell them about everything that happened last night…excluding the sex. I might be endangering them.
That sex, though… I’m blushing, and I hope they don’t see that and wonder why.
