He went to his office and returned his calls.
Downstairs, Curtis Fontenot waited in the dark. He would stay there until the men Judah had sent arrived. It was a mercy, of sorts. The only kind Judah knew how to give.
OrmaybeCurtis wasalreadydead.
The apartment above the food bank consisted of three rooms.
The kitchen and living area shared the same cramped footprint — functional, but the air in there felt recycled and heavy with the scent of dust and the faint, lingering metallic tang of the canned goods downstairs. The bathroom had a clawfoot tub that looked like a porcelain tomb, totally out of place, and a showerhead that hissed like a cornered snake. But it was thebedroom window that held the most weight. It faced the oaks, and even on that first night, the Spanish moss hadn’t looked like decoration. It had looked like tattered gray shrouds draped over the branches to hide whatever the trees were doing in the dark. Existing was my guess, but I wasn’t a good guesser so I abstained.
I stood there for a long time, watching the shadows settle into the bark, feeling a prickle at the base of my neck that had nothing to do with the drafty window. St. Francisville was beautiful, but it was a beauty that was wrapped around a rotting carcass. Beneath the humidity and the floral perfume of the night, there was a vibration. A low, rhythmic thrum of something old and predatory.
I was good at the reset. The making-do. I’d spent my life learning how to fit into small spaces, how to be the shape of whatever room I was in — preferably not a triangle.
I had unpacked my one bag — a pathetic tally of a life, really — and had lined my three books on the windowsill — the genre is irrelevant, but the names were religious enough like... Priest. Preacher Man. Crossed. Don’t dare ask me for the plot, I couldn’t tell you.
I had proceeded to hang my two good dresses in the closet, the fabric looking thin, but I decided not to think about it too much. I wasn’t really a dress girl and these would stay hung until the next time I moved.
I arranged my toiletries on the shelf in the exact order my mother had shown me ten years past and took a good hard look of myself in the mirror. I had her dark hair and my father’s pale skin — and a sunburn across my shoulders from being in the sun for five minutes while filling up at the gas station.
I should’ve moved to a Northern state, where the sun didn’t bite and the air didn’t get stuck in the lungs, and yet — here Iwas. Soaking up radiation and the overbearing humidity of the plantation country.
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the door.
You’re okay,I told the empty air.You’re here, and nobody knows where ‘here’ is.
That was the lie that usually let me sleep.
My father’s name was Edmund Evangeline, a name that tasted like iron and ash. He’d been a deacon in a town outside Meridian, Mississippi, a man who moved through life like he was already being judged by a God who didn't like what He saw. He didn't have to raise his voice to break you — although he did that plenty enough. He just had to be in the room. He carried a stillness with him that acted like a vacuum, sucking the air out of your lungs until you were lightheaded and compliant.
My mother had survived by disappearing into the wallpaper. I’d survived by becoming a tool — something useful, something quiet, something that didn't leave a footprint.
I’d left at twenty-one, fleeing a specific kind of silence that I still couldn't put into words without feeling like I was choking.
I told myself I wasn’t running. Running meant there was a finish line. No. I was just… drifting. Looking for a place where the air didn’t feel like a hand around my throat.
St. Francisville, with its moss-choked oaks and its “honesty” bullet holes, felt like it might be the end of the road. But as I lay in the dark, listening to the cicadas scream their frantic, mindless chorus, I felt that weight again. This town wasn’t a sanctuary. It felt like a trap that had been set long ago, just waiting for someone like me to stumble into the center of it.
I went to sleep, because being tired was a thing I had to cross out of my daily agenda.
I dreamt of a cellar, and the smell of copper, and a shadow that looked exactly like a man standing in a doorway, watching me drown.
Monday morning I was at the food bank office by seven, because showing up early to a new job is the professional equivalent of sayingI am not a problembefore anyone's had the chance to wonder. Darlene arrived at seven-fifteen and spent forty minutes showing me the filing system, the volunteer schedule, the donation ledger, and the quirks of the ancient printer in the corner; it required a specific combination of coaxing and mild threats to function, but that was just as well. Most good things did.
“It responds to firmness,” Darlene told me, completely serious.
“I'll keep that in mind,” I said, fully aware I’d forget it when we moved to the next thing.
By ten I had reorganized two months of misfiled donation receipts and identified three scheduling conflicts in the volunteer calendar for August. Darlene looked at the fixed calendar like I'd performed a minor miracle and told me Pastor Beaumont had made an excellent choice. I said thank you and did not mention that reorganizing things other people had let go chaotic was basically my primary coping mechanism.
Neatness made sense.
Structure made sense.
Pastor Beaumont himself was not in that morning.Meeting in Baton Rouge, Darlene said, with the fond vagueness of someone who had long since stopped asking what the meetings were about. I told myself the mild deflation I felt was just the absence of clear direction from my new employer.
Sure, it was.
Sure itfuckingwas, Mercy.
