Grace at seventeen. Outside a high school gym, in a group of girls. She's on the edge, half in the frame and half out. The other girls are laughing. She's not. Her arms are crossed, right index finger tapping her left elbow.
Grace at twenty. Walking to work. The restaurant awning is visible behind her. Work clothes, hair pulled back. Her face is slightly rounder than it is now. She's carrying a bag I haven't seen her carry.
Grace at twenty-two. Twenty-three. Each photo taken from a distance. Each one documenting, not capturing. No birthdays. No holidays. No dinner tables. No hugs. Just a girl growing up inside a frame held by people who were paid to watch her.
I close the folder and put it in my duffle bag just as the crunch of gravel under tires hits me.
The front door opens.
Linda comes in with two grocery bags. She sees the coffee stain on the hardwood first. Then she sees Paul. The bags hit the floor. A jar of marinara shatters on the tile, red sauce spraying across the white linoleum in a wide arc. It’s poetic, in a sick sort of way.
She turns to run.
I'm between her and the door before her second step.
She faces me. She doesn't scream. Doesn't beg. Her eyes are dry and her jaw is set and she has the face of a woman who has been waiting for this, who knew from the day they placed a drugged thirteen-year-old girl in her care that this was one of the possible endings. Now it's here and she has nothing to say.
"Take your vitamins." I grunt as I push into her jaw so it pops open before slamming a bottle in her mouth and punching it into the back of her throat. “This is for Graziella.”
Her eyes widen. One second of pure recognition, the understanding that I know everything, that the entire operation is exposed, that the girl she's been drugging for eleven years has someone standing in her kitchen with a knife who knows her real name. Then the knife moves.
She drops next to the grocery bags. The marinara spreads across the tile and meets the blood and the two reds mix, sauce and something thicker, and the kitchen smells like tomatoes and copper and revenge.
I clean the scene. Thorough, automatic. I've done this enough times that the process doesn't require thought. Wipe surfaces. Check for trace. Collect materials. Bag evidence. I take the phones. The lockbox contents. The photographs, the logs, the pill bottles. I take care to clean my knife.
I call Danila. "It's done."
"Both?"
"Both."
"I'll send a crew. Six hours."
"The back door."
"Copy." He pauses. "You good?"
"Yes."
I leave through the back door. Walk two streets to the rental car and put the bags in the trunk. Drive back to Philadelphia. Park three blocks from the apartment and walk to the building before heading upstairs. Then I wash my hands in the bathroom sink.
The water runs clear. Gloves did their job…. my hands are clean.
They were always going to be clean.
I stand at the sink, looking at my hands, thinking about Linda’s face when she saw me. The absence of surprise. She knew what she was doing for eleven years. She knew it would end like this. She did it anyway. For the salary, the house in Chestnut Hill, the lawn service, the Buick, the flowers and the lifestyle.
Now that the hard part is done, I have an urge to watch my girl from table four before solidifying her place in my life.
Grace is working the dinner shift. I can see her through the restaurant window as I approach, moving between tables. The world looks the same as it did yesterday.
It isn't.
Not for her, at least. The withdrawals will happen soon and then everything shifts.
I walk across the street, through the door, and sit at table four. She sees me from across the room. Her face changes. A softening, a fraction of an inch of opening that she doesn't give anyone else. I've watched her greet every regular in this restaurant. None of them get this.
"Hey," she says, coming to the table. "The usual?"
