The salon door opens.
Adena comes out first, moving with purpose, and behind her Lucia stumbles like a woman being dragged to the gallows.Her face is wrecked—makeup smeared in black streaks, eyes so swollen from crying they're nearly shut, her whole body trembling.
She looks through the windshield and tries to wrench away.
Adena's grip on her arm tightens—not brutal, but unyielding—and keeps her moving forward.
I reach back, pop the side door.
Lucia practically falls into the van, legs shaking so hard they won't hold her.Adena slides back into the passenger seat and buckles herself in without meeting my eyes.
Lucia starts crying before we even hit the street—quiet, broken sounds that fill the van and make tension roll off Adena in waves.
Out past where the city ends and the buildings thin to nothing.Past the last struggling suburbs where chain-link fences mark property lines nobody wants.The highway opens up and swampland spreads on both sides—ancient and dark, cypress trees rising from water black as oil, their trunks thick and twisted, branches draped in Spanish moss that hangs like burial shrouds.
I turn onto a dirt road that's barely more than a suggestion—two ruts carved through mud by trucks that came before.The van bounces hard over roots and rocks.Spanish moss drags across the windshield, leaving wet streaks.
We go deeper.No houses.No other roads.Just trees and water and silence broken only by Lucia's sobbing and the crunch of tires on dirt.
I stop where the road ends, where it just dissolves into swamp and there's nowhere left to go.
My hand moves to my back, closes around the gun.
Lucia sees the gun and her breath catches, chokes off mid-sob."No—no, please, Jagger, please don't?—"
"Get out."
She doesn't move, just presses herself into the corner of the van, shaking her head over and over like a broken toy.
I open my door.The humidity hits like walking into a mouth—hot, wet, suffocating.I walk around to her side, boots squelching in mud, and yank open her door.
"Out."
"Please—" Her voice cracks, breaks.
"Out.Now."
She half-falls into the mud, heels sinking instantly.Her knees buckle and she catches herself on the van, fingers white-knuckled against the metal.
I gesture with the gun toward the trees, toward the dark water beyond them where the swamp waits, patient and hungry.
Lucia backs away from me.One stumbling step.Then another.Her breath comes in gasps now, hyperventilating, tears and mascara painting her face like a tragic mask.
Behind me, I hear Adena's door open.Hear her feet hit the ground.
I don't turn around, can't afford to look at her.I know what I’ll see.It’s what I see reflected in the mirror every morning.
"Walk," I tell Lucia.
She takes one shaking step into the shallow water at the swamp's edge.
Then another.
The mud sucks at her heels.Water rises past her ankles.Past her calves.She's sobbing so hard she can barely breathe, barely move, but she keeps going because the gun in my hand doesn't give her a choice.
"Keep going."
"Please—I'm sorry—I didn't mean to—I was just angry?—"
