I wave, flashing a bright smile. She approaches me like a death row inmate on her last walk. Arms at her sides, fists balled, shoulders stiff.
“Hi,” I say. “Remember me from this morning? Jade.”
“What are you doing here?” She has a soft voice. She’s cautious, which is how I know she’s a smart one.
“Edison was worried about you,” I say, offering his name up to put her at ease. “He didn’t want you walking home in this heat.”
She grips the strap of her backpack, hefting its weight against her back. The boy stands at a wary distance, a guardian angel watching over her.She will break you, you poor, dumb thing.
“I’m all right,” she says. “It’s only a few blocks.”
My smile turns soft, not quite pleading. “You’d really be doing me a favor if you let me take you,” I say. “Edison is all in knots about that man who went missing. He just wants you to be safe.”
Sadie shrugs out of her backpack and retrieves her phone from a side pocket. She turns away from me, tapping a message. It sends with awhoosh. A few seconds later, I hear the chime of the reply come in.
Clever girl. She texted Edison to make sure my story checked out. Later tonight, when Edison leaves his phone unattended, I’ll scroll through his messages and find out exactly what she said to him. He doesn’t keep a passcode on his phone because he is trusting. Muscular, tall, confident, male. The world hasn’t treated him the way it has treated even the youngest of girls, and so he never learned caution.
I wait patiently as Sadie says goodbye to the boy. She waves to the others who are clustered on the sidewalk, and then she tosses her backpack on the floor at her feet when she climbs in. The air conditioner blows the fine tendrils of hair around her face. She’s all sunlight colors, and she resembles her mother, but at the same time she’s a different energy. Sheila was gregarious and flashy with manicured nails and makeup, but Sadie is elusive and reserved in that way that will make men want her for all her life.
“Thanks for the ride,” she says.
“Tell me where to turn,” I say. “Not used to this area.”
We ride in silence. I don’t even turn on the radio; I’m waiting to see if she’ll help herself to the dial, but she doesn’t. She only sits hunched and staring straight ahead. “Take a left here,” she says, so softly I almost can’t hear her over the whirring of the AC.
She wants to look at me, but she doesn’t. She’s filled with questions, the least of which are not who I am and where the hell I’ve come from. Edison hasn’t mentioned me. I’m not on social media. Three weeks ago, I didn’t exist.
I don’t make small talk. I don’t care what grade she’s in, or the name of that boy, or what she likes to do for fun. Watching her interact with her peers has already told me what I needed to know about her anyway.
“How did you meet my stepdad?” she asks. She glances at me for a second, but I keep my eyes on the road.
“We go to the same church,” I say.
“Oh.” She flattens the hem of her dress. “Do you like him?”
I’ve already answered one question, and that was to establish some trust. Answering another would give her too much control.
“Do you like stir-fry?” I ask her, putting on my friendliest tone. “Because I’m a great cook”—she already knows this; she scarfed down the breakfast I made—“and I was thinking it would be fun if you had dinner with Edison and me tonight.”
She looks at me again, and this time I see her eyes narrow, her mouth pucker in thought. She’ll come, I already know, because she loves Edison. She feels how magnetic he is, the father she wishes she had instead of the overbearing one she’s got. She’ll come because she hates the thought of a woman who is not her dear mother stealing kisses as she stirs the eggs at the kitchen stove, making him laugh, squeezing his hand on the armrest in the car as he drives her home.
Sadie is young. Still innocent. She could never guess at how different Edison’s loneliness and longing are from her own. Last night, the way he reached for me, the things he murmured in my ear, the unspoken promise I gave him that he doesn’t have to be alone. I’m here now. I’m filling in all the spaces in his heart and in his bed.
She is hoping that I’ll go away, and this already gives me the advantage, because I know that she’s just as permanent a fixture in his life as I am now.We all have a role to play, little lightning bolt.Rather than push her away, I’ll find a use forher.
13
With three hours to spare until Edison gets out of work, I find myself wanting to talk to my only friend here. Dara has become a constant in the weeks since I’ve come to Rainwood, always manifesting in places—on the side of the road with a grocery bag, or out on the porch tapping away on her phone, overhearing everything. She’s wise for her twenty-six years—like me, she understands that there are some questions best not asked. Although she never misses a beat, she doesn’t pry about where I’m from or what I’m doing here, and I don’t ask her about her parents down in Florida or why she’s sending them so much money. I just hide the cash she hands me under the upholstery in the trunk of the car. The less we say, the more we come to understand each other.
But now that Sadie has entered the fray, I have something to talk to my neighbor about. A genuine Jade problem. How to contend with the child of your new love’s dead wife. She isn’t outside when I comehome, but I can hear the soft murmur of a TV when I approach her door and knock.
It takes a full minute for her to come to the door, looking so bleary and rumpled that I wonder if I’ve woken her up, even though it’s well past two p.m.
“Oh, hey,” she says, smiling but not opening the door all the way. I can just make out the living room behind her. It’s identical to my own, but with red suede couches to match the curtains, and the television is placed on the other side of the room. A three-wick candle burns on the coffee table beside a little orange pill bottle. Cinnamon spice. A dying trail of smoke wafts from an ashtray in a straight line. “Sorry. I just took a painkiller, so I’m fuzzy. I was about to take a nap.”
Her voice is heavy, her eyes filled with their usual warmth, but glazed over.
Something isn’t right. A nettling churn in my stomach warns me. Dara does not nap in the afternoons, does not take pills that make her hazy. She’s not an addict, and she’s in control of her shit. I’ve seen her nearly every day, and I know what to look for.
