I’m ashamed to admit how much I want to walk away from the Saranac Strangler, from being a bane witch, and live a life that’s uneventful. I killed myself to get here. I killed one man to keep from being raped and another to spare his wife, one for reasons so blurry and lost to time I can scarcely remember them if I ever knew at all. And now I’ve killed someone I cared about so his pain would end. I shouldn’t have to kill anymore. But after what I saw, what I learned on that trailhead today, I know I can’t walk away from this fight. If I don’t take the Saranac Strangler down, who will? If I don’t fulfill my cycle, I’m risking Regis’s life along with so many innocent women. They all deserve better than what the Strangler will give them. The world deserves better.
“I want you to tell them,” I admit, knowing that it means I’m admitting the shame is alive in me, a stowaway in my heart. “But only so they stop breathing down my neck. I will kill the Saranac Strangler regardless. I know now that’s what I’m here to do.”
She leans her head back. “Your courage is as plain as the color of your hair.”
I wish I could smile. The praise is a bit of salve on my weary heart. But Ed’s loss hangs over us like a heavy cloud, and smiling will feel wrong for a while.
When I don’t respond, she continues. “There probably isn’ta one of us who wouldn’t want to walk away if given the chance, to be with sons and lovers long since lost to us. Except maybe Verna—she’s ruthless. That tampon trick… But there’s a mighty cost for our freedom, and we’d be asking others to pay it.” She sighs. “I suppose they can’t really argue that you’ve fulfilled your obligation. And perhaps it will look good that you came to my rescue.”
Relief washes over me, leaving my limbs with a shapeless, stretched-out sensation, the way I feel after yoga or too much weed. The future wipes itself clean, a smooth and gleaming shingle of potential outcomes, blank but fertile, waiting for me and no one else.
I sip my tea, watching the flames leap over one another and listening to Bart snore beside me. When I look up, Myrtle is fast asleep, hands slack in her lap. I get up carefully and go to the bathroom, undress, and wash the stain of guilt off my skin. Unfortunately, the soap won’t penetrate deeper. I crawl into the bed in only my underwear, covers pulled practically over my head, as if even the weight of my pajamas is more than I can bear tonight, a feather too many on the scales. I decide to dream of flower crowns, will-o’-the-wisps, and fairy processions, the spun-sugar fantasies of my little-girl self, what populates the woods beside predators, impenetrable shadows, and deadly plant matter.
But when I close my eyes, all I can see is the split of Ed’s bulging eyelid, lashes matting against gray skin, and the motionless slab of his back, gummy with blood that has stopped flowing. The trauma won’t let me sleep, and after many long, painful minutes, I finally get up, tug on my jeans and a flannel shirt, and tiptoe back through the kitchen, pulling Myrtle’s car keys from the jacket pocket I found them in before. Bart lifts his head as I open the front door. I press a finger to my lips, and he lowers it again, content to stay by Myrtle’s side.
I’d like to say it’s somewhere on the road that I decide where I’m going, but the truth is, I’ve known all along. The hands of men have not been kind to me. I should distrust them, like wildlife,unpredictable and misleading.Don’t feed the animals.But Regis’s hands are nothing like Henry’s—those long spaghetti fingers and scrubbed nail beds shining in the light, pale as filtered beeswax, mean as hornets. In the early days, when we were still dating, I remember how he would touch me, deliberate or not at all. The way he always held my hand a little too tight, his weight in every pat and stroke. A hardness behind the smallest of gestures. At the time, I saw it as a sign of strength. Henry was implacable, solid like steel, incorruptible, I thought. I didn’t know the putrescence was already inside him, shielded by that impregnable manner while it festered.
Regis’s hands are slow, methodical even, not calculating but ponderous. They choose their course with care and a sense of wonder, every touch receptive. I can’t imagine him making a fist, though I’m sure he has. He holds me lightly with no desire for constraint, as if it is enough to simply pass over my skin and be left wanting. As if I am liquid and pour through him.
It is Regis’s hands I need.
When I pull up and get out, I make my way to his door. The night is aging like fine wine, rich and layered, impenetrable, steady. There is only one way I can scrub my mind clean tonight. This is my forgetting. And Myrtle insists I’m no longer a danger. She made a point to remind me how early I needed to be up to food prep in the café, that I would have to feed again—and soon—for the Strangler.
My knock is urgent, ringing out with need. He answers it with sleepy eyes, a question in his expression. “Acacia? Your eyes… Is everything okay?”
My irises must be the color of poison apples by now, green as peridots. I have no explanation. I don’t give either of us time to speak. If I open my mouth, it will all come spilling out, the ugly truth of who I am and what I’ve done. Sobs I cannot cry for Ed will pour over, and he will know. Regis will know it was me.
Instead, I press myself against him, my lips finding his in the dark, my body speaking for me—asking,begging.He pulls me in, shutting out the world around us, drawing me deeper into him, tangling. The hush in his living room is like a buffer from the brutalreality of our respective worlds. We move inside it like butterflies, lighting on each other in a hundred places, breathing the same air, the same need, drinking each other in sips and swallows, little nips of gratification. He is more confident this time and less rushed. He moves with leisure, a man with eternity in his pocket. He takes my breasts in his mouth like candied apples—something to be savored for long hours before the heart is breached, the pulp extracted. I melt beneath him, unable to hold my tongue, my composure, a thought or form. Climax ripples over me in waves, the undulating expression of things undone, like water or sound.
We lie on the carpet after, loose as old boot strings, shameless as dogs.
He says, “You’re not like any woman I’ve ever known.”
Some women might be troubled by that, the implied comparison, the undertone of quantity. Perhaps I should be. Perhaps I am too languid to care. Even Beth Ann feels light-years away. He has no idea how true his statement is. “No. I don’t imagine I am.”
He presses up on his elbows, smiles down on me. Appreciation kindles in his eyes. I like my body when he looks at it. There is nothing out of place. “Why is that?”
This is why we don’t speak. Because talking inevitably leads to the things I cannot say, the secrets I can’t tell. With my thighs, with my lips and neck and the palms of my hands, the swell of my hips, I can speak unhindered, enunciate every feeling I wish to communicate. My body is articulate in a way my mouth can never be. An ache catches in my throat behind the larynx. “You tell me.”
He sighs, brushing the hair away from my shoulder with his fingertips. “You’re a mystery to me, but you’re more present than anyone I know.”
“That’s because I don’t have a past. I can only exist in this moment.” Out of uniform, Regis has become boyish, simple, a teasing edge behind his smile, his hair too short to be messy but still rumpled. “I’m not the only mystery around here.”
He grins as if this pleases him.
I reach up and tug at a strand of his hair, not curly, but definitely not straight. “You’re nothing like they think you are, are you? Does anyone truly know you?”
He blushes. “I’m just me,” he says. “No mystery here.”
My hand drops. This is categorically untrue. “What about her?” I point to the picture of the girl, the one I saw the first night I stayed here.
Surprise pulls him back.
“She’s important to you.”
“Tanya,” he whispers. “That was her name.”
“What happened to her?”
