“‘Liked’ is an understatement,” he says. “I keep everything she made from age two in the basement.”
That much is true. For as long as Nelle has painted, she has given her finished pieces to Father to store for safekeeping. He never once hung one of them for display.
“My daughter loves art, too,” the officer says. “You seem fine here. I got a distressed call from a young man earlier today. He was worried about a friend of his, Nelle Quill, but we have no record of you having a second daughter.”
“It was probably a prank,” he says. “The kids here think me the Boo Radley of Lincoln. My house gets TP’d about twice a year.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, then.”
Their footsteps fade.
Nelle releases an imprisoned breath as feeling returns to her face and fingertips. But it’s not until minutes after the police car crackles away up the gravel driveway that she feels her body’s tight hold unravel. A far-off command guides her around the house and to the front door.
Father stands in the kitchen, his back to her. The lights are off, so the room is shape and shadow.
“That boy is responsible for this,” he says, his voice low and cold. Nothing like the poor, lonely man who spoke to the police officer moments ago. “Youare responsible for this.”
“I’m sorry,” Nelle says. The apology leaves her lips like bubbling acid. She wants to spit it out, to sear his face with her words. Instead, she chokes. She tries to take a step forward, her thigh flexing with the force, but her legs are frozen in place.
A journal hangs limp in Father’s hand. She can sense the switch in his aura, a cat going from cuddly to demonic in the span of seconds.He flips on the stovetop, and a blue flame appears. The smell of gas hits Nelle as he scratches in his journal.
Her feet carry her to the stove, and she holds her hand over the flame. She no longer begs for mercy, not since she endured his hundredth form of torture—three hours with her head held underwater—and realized that he will never change.
Her hand inches closer to the gas flame. It starts hot and itchy, like her skin is peeling back. Her palm opens like a rose, but she doesn’t dare look. Whimpers rip into sobs, and she relents to the fire. She scream-cries from the bellows of her gut. Years ago she gave up any hope that the neighbors were close enough to overhear her. The flame burns, but she heals fast, an endless loop of passing out and waking up over the stove to more indescribable torture.
Burn and heal. Over and over.
Again and again.
Chapter 5
James’s typewriter hums under his fingertips as he finishes off the final draft of his sole fixation. Through the window above his desk, Pat the mail carrier’s white vehicle hisses to a stop at the mailbox, blasting Nicki Minaj. Friday. It has been two days, and the letter is finally at a point where he thinks it makes sense. Where his questions for Nelle sound more curious and concerned than offensive. Where he is apologetic for sending the police and hopeful she is all right regarding that lapse in judgment. He signs the letter,From your friend James.
His next article for Nancy remains untouched, and yesterday was the deadline. Maybe, just maybe, if he starts working now, he can still beg her for forgiveness.
James folds Nelle’s letter into an envelope as he steps into the dark garage to leave, but someone is already in there.
“Holy shit!” he shrieks, his caw bouncing between the garage walls.
His mom is seven feet off the ground, on a ladder, tinkering with the dome light.
“Please don’t curse in front of me,” she says. Then, straight to the point, “Where are you going?”
“To see one of my friends.” He holds up the letter as proof. “I wrote her a letter.”
“You what?” His mom frowns, either confused that her son is actually leaving the house for an innocent reason, or that someonein this day and age would send a letter. She climbs down the ladder, reaching for the envelope.
He snatches it back.
“Who’s the girl, James, and why haven’t you brought her to dinner yet?”
Her hands get all grabby, the baggy arms of her sweater swinging as she reaches for him. Reluctantly, he gives into her embrace, an iron grip around his letter.
“She’s just a friend,” he says.
“Sure.”
When she finally pulls away, James tucks the envelope in his back pocket and wrestles with a question that has been on his mind. Before he started college, in the living room of their downtown house, eavesdropped on by his mom’s hutch of antique dolls, his parents explained the financial burdens of life and how he would go under and be doomed if he didn’t build foundations of support early on. His future could either be in medicine or law, no questions asked, and medicine felt like a subject he could study enough to be good at.
