It’s the overpowering desire that snaps me back to my senses. I can’t lose control—not ever, and especially not now, so early into our relationship, when the slightest mistake could scare him away and ruin everything. So I smile at him, easing back into my mask. “I’m so clumsy,” I say, Jade once more.
He smiles too. Relief as he slips back into his own act. Back to the facade he wears for the world. We sit to have our little picnic, abandoning the fictional hair clip. But the fear still hangs between us. Not the fear that I might have slipped and tumbled off the hiking trail, but that we’re both still falling down something much steeper, and that we’ll never catch ourselves; we’ll never stop; it’s already too late.
—
I THINK ABOUT THEmoment Edison grabbed me. How I could feel the tension in all his muscles. The intense look on his face.
He’s lost someone. He’ll never let it happen again. Who was it? An old lover? A sibling? A friend? He’s vigilant. Like my sisters. Like me.
Moody holds my head in her lap as we watchWheel of Fortune. She was irritated when I came home from today’s picnic with Edison without much to report.What did you talk about? Nothing. Well—what did he say? Not much.Admittedly, I’ve held back on the details. I told my sisters that Edison packed peanut butter sandwiches for us—I could have made us something, but it was a test. I wanted to find out what kind of a bachelor he was. Not the kind who can cook, but more important, not a man of excess. I can do something with this knowledge.
“Boring,” Iris had said. I didn’t tell them about my stunt falling over the hiking trail, even though they would have gone wild over it and called me a genius. But they would get nervous if I told them about the raw look on his face when he held me, and that I felt something change between us. The perfect victim is just smart enough to be interesting, but not too clever. He shouldn’t see the real me, and I shouldn’t be trying to show it to him.
Iris thinks I should just find someone else. She saw the picture of him that I snuck during our first date, taken from under the table with part of his face obscured by the umbrella stand. “There are a million more like that in towns like these,” she said.
But there isn’t another Edison. I think of him and I feel sick. Last night, I lay awake and thought about the sparrow from church kissing him. She’d come over with a homemade cobbler and say she just wanted to check in. He would invite her inside.
I grab my phone and stare at the message screen. He hasn’t sent me anything since we parted ways earlier this afternoon. “I’m going to text him,” I say.
“There’s something wrong with him.” Iris is knitting a scarf with the same baby blue yarn she used to garrote a man she dated back in Idaho. “Reasonably attractive, single, and not trying to get into the sack with someone as beautiful as you? Someone fucked that man’s head up.”
Moody rakes her fingers through my hair. “She might be right, Sis.” Her approach wields more compassion than that of Iris, to whom one man is the same as the next.
I can’t argue when they’re on the same side against me. They didn’t feel what I felt today. I didn’t tell them what his touch did to me in the church. Besides that, I can’t argue when I can barely explain it myself.
“He’s the one,” I say. I’ve been quiet all evening, wondering just what the hell is wrong with me. Wondering why I can’t tell my sisters the truth. He’s just a man, and practically a stranger. If I blow our cover, if I screw this up, it’s not just my own safety I’m jeopardizing, but my sisters’ as well.
But I can’t help myself. That moment is mine, and I’m still working out my next move.
It will be fine, Sissy. Nothing will go wrong. You’ve cleaned up everyone’s messes for all these years.
The show goes to commercial, and Iris looks at Moody and then at me. “I pushed you into this,” she says. “It’s not too late to change it up. It can be Moody’s turn. You can run the cleanup.”
I sit up. “You don’t think I can do this,” I say. “You both still think of me as your baby sister.”
“Sis—” Moody is already starting with that mollifying tone of hers, but this time, I won’t listen to it.
“No,” I interrupt her. “I don’t have the luxury of just diving headfirst into a kill like the two of you, because there isn’t someone else to clean up after me if I make a mistake.Ihave to clean up. I’m more than just the janitor, you know. This is my kill and I’m going to do it my own way.”
Before I can tell whether that’s shock or pride on Iris’s face, I breeze past both of them. I storm up the stairs and into the bedroom.
I start a new text to Edison:Hey... How’s your night going?
Whoosh.Sent.
The three dots appear, disappear, appear, disappear. Then they stop entirely. The TV hums softly downstairs, and music thrums in through the wall we share with Dara and Tim.
I type again:You okay?
I restrain myself. Sending this is the dumbest possible move. It reeks of desperation, and if this is going to work, I have to stay in control. When Moody first started, she chased more than one man away in the early stages by being too clingy. The goal is to make him want you and think it’s his own idea.
What happened? I thought I had you. Don’t you know how beautiful it will be when we look into each other’s eyes for the last time? I’ve already dreamed of how I’ll do it.
The phone rings and I’m so startled that I drop it.edison churchin bold white letters. For a horrible moment I worry that I actually typed out what was in my head, but of course I didn’t. He would have called the police before he ever called me after reading something like that.
“Hello?” I answer.
On the other end of the line, across town, through the still, warm evening he sighs. “Hey, Jade.”
