Moody and Iris reminding me that my little dream can’t last forever.
—
DARA IS BACK TOsmoking her cigarettes on the balcony, but most of the day, she takes Tim’s car and she drives off. To collect her thoughts, to shop, to park in the middle of the desert wilderness and scream—I don’t know.
On Sunday, I take her with me to church.
She sits with Liam, the would-be neurologist, and when I lookover my shoulder through the first chorus of “Amazing Grace,” she’s smiling at a paper crane he’s folded out of the weekly prayer sheet. There’s a grief in her eyes, and sometimes it weakens only to come back with a force.
Today, she looks effervescent. Her hair is curled and she’s wearing mascara that accentuates her long and heavy lashes. But the grief is a black hole within her, and her smiles don’t reach her eyes.
Some days are better than others. She’s becoming a bit paranoid. She swears that someone broke into her house and pawed through her laundry. She says a hand towel is missing. I wish I could convince her that it’s her own mind, her guilt toying with her emotions. After disposing of Iris’s first boyfriend, all three of us bolted wide awake whenever we heard an ambulance wailing past the apartment. Yesterday, Dara was positive there was a wiretap on her phone and she mangled it in the garbage disposal.
She wanted to call a plumber, and I explained that it would look bad. People don’t mangle their phones in the garbage disposal for no good reason, and even if it takes a year for Tim’s family to report him missing, that plumber will be called to testify. It took three hours for me to dismantle the entire disposal unit and shake out the broken bits of glass and metal.
When the service is over, Edison tells me he wants to try a new diner that’s opening up. But I check in with Dara before we leave. She’s standing alone by the snack table, considering the pastries that have been cut into squares and staked with toothpicks.
“Do you want to come with Edison and me?” I ask her. “Bring Liam. Might be fun.”
“No,” she says, canting her head and then deciding to fill a paper cup with coffee. “I’m going home. I promised my brother we could FaceTime before he goes to bed.” She sucks the cream and coffee offthe wooden stirrer, and there’s a bit of her usual spark when she looks at me.Come back to us, Dara,I think.Life can be so beautiful for someone like you.
“You know, I never really pegged you for the hallelujah type,” she says.
“Busted. Total heathen,” I say. “I’m just here for the stale pastries.”
“And the men.” She nods to Edison, who’s standing in the doorway talking to Jeannie. Sunlight brightens the outline of his golden brown curls, the fine hairs on his arms, making him something holy.
“Especially that,” I say.
“Take good care of him,” she says, her voice strained with an impending onslaught of tears. “He’s a good one. I can tell.”
I wrap an arm around her back. Gentle, always gentle. I lead her into the bathroom and I close both of us in the stall. She doesn’t find this strange.
“Do I need to worry about you?” I whisper.
She stares at me for a long second before she lowers her gaze to the ground.
I tip her chin with my finger, and she resists looking at me as her eyes fill with tears.
Fuck.
“Look at my eyes,” I tell her, and she flinches at the snarl in my voice, but she does as I tell her. “It’s over,” I say. “Do you understand me?” In this moment, I’m Sissy, not Jade. Not the sweet neighbor who gossips with her on the porch over glasses of strawberry Arbor Mist. I’m the menacing force who dismembered her husband and disposed of his pieces, and I need her to hear me.
Dara’s wide dark eyes explore mine, and there’s curiosity behind all the tears and mourning. The intensity of it flares brightly across her features, and I think that she can see the truth in me.
She grits her teeth and nods.
“I will help you,” I say, and brush her tears away gently with my thumbs. “But you have to let me.”
“I already told you, I’m not going to call the—” I put my hand over her mouth before she can say the word.Police.Even though we’re alone in here, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about these small towns, it’s that the walls have ears.
Now she stares at me, breathing hard, both of us crammed together in this small space. She sees—I know she does—that I am not what I seem when I’m out in the world. I’m something much deeper that she’s only just scratched the surface of. Rather than being scared of me, she’s curious.
I’m the one who cleans the messes, Dara. Because the ones who make them always find me.
When I climb into Edison’s car, he leans across the console to kiss me slow. His hand curls under my chin, thumb sweeping across my throat, making my blood go hot.
He’s so careful with me since the accident. He offers to drive us everywhere. He brings tea to me in bed and kisses me in places that drive me wild. We’re still tentative withlove, that colossal word. But even though it’s rarely said, it’s always felt.
