My mouth tips despite everything.
You’re assuming I own any.
I’m going to have to buy some—I keep losing fucking underwear.
Jesus Christ. We’re fixing that too.
I set the phone down and exhale. One piece handled. The next waits for me in the bag under the chair.
I look at it for a long moment before I pull it out.
The gun is heavier than it should be.
Or maybe that’s not true. Maybe it weighs exactly what a gun ought to weigh and I’m the one who’s changed around it. Maybe there is no version of this—of me, in a cheap motel room with a kitten on the bed and revenge in my bloodstream—that was ever going to feel natural.
My teeth chatter.
The room isn’t cold. The A/C unit wheezes more than it works, and Louisiana heat presses at the windows even this early.
Still, my teeth chatter. Having a gun in my hand makes the revenge real. It isn’t notes and names and plans anymore. It isn’t theory. It isn’t the shape of hatred living inside me like a second skeleton.
It’s metal. Weight. Choice.
I force my numb fingers to take the unloaded gun out of the bag and turn it over in my hands. The matte finish absorbs the light rather than catches it. Such a small thing, really. Compact. Almost ugly in its simplicity. Nothing ceremonial about it. No grandeur. No poetry.
It’s function is the thing—Death. It has the capacity to change multiple lives. Spread violence. Protect a family. Destroy one.
Could I use this?
The question rakes across something already bruised.
Will I be the same after?
Because the truth is, I’ve struggled so much with if I can do it. I don’t have a choice.
Having and using are two very different variables, and I know without a doubt I’m changed simply by taking this gun. Simply from the act of walking into Nash’s study and taking this weapon with the potential for ending a life. Mine. His. Someone else’s by accident.
Pop pop pop.
The memory comes without warning, stealing my breath and my mind and every inch of my body.
Gunfire like kernels over heat.
My child’s body gone rigid with terror.
The smell. God, the smell. Smoke and something coppery and something else I was too young to name but old enough to recognize aswrongforever after. I’m seven again, trapped in a moment that keeps happening every fucking time I close my eyes. The rest of the people I care about—my safety net, my home, my entire stupid beautiful little world—changing with the pull of a finger.
I rock on the bed and my grip slips, slick on the stock. I tighten it.
Anger rises and steadies me. Anger has always steadied me.
A child has no choice but to adapt when everything she loves is ripped away from her. That kind of change isn’t something you flow with. It’s something you endure. Something forced into your bones whether you asked for it or not. You either become someone who can carry it, or it breaks you open and leaves you there.
The gun is cold in my hands, and I realize revenge doesn’t feel like power. It feels like crossing a line you can’t uncross.
Damn Nash for making me think that way.
Homer hops onto the bed and watches me with solemn little kitten eyes, as if he senses the change in the room. Or maybe the change in me.
