"Yes."
"You weren't here yesterday."
"No."
"I noticed." Her chin lifts a fraction, daring me to comment. Then she's gone, walking to the kitchen to put the order in. My chest fills with something I don't have vocabulary for, because two hours ago I killed two people, now the woman I did it for is telling me she noticed I was missing and her chin went up when she said it.
The pork shoulder comes up. She brings it, sets the plate down. Her finger taps the edge once. I look at her hand and think about the photographs in the folder in the trunk of the rental car. Grace at fourteen, finger tapping her elbow. Grace at seventeen. Twenty. Twenty-two. Documented. Watched, but never known.
The pill bottle on her nightstand has maybe a week left. She's going to run out. She's going to call Linda. Linda isn't going to answer. She's going to call Paul. Paul isn't going to answer. She's going to text and nobody is going to text back because the Marinos are on the floor of their kitchen in Chestnut Hill and a Bratva disposal crew is six hours from making them disappear. Grace is standing at my table tapping the edge of my plate with no idea that the only people who could refill her prescription are gone.
I did that. I saved her.
She's going to start remembering. The dreams first, then the fragments, then the flood. Eleven years of suppressed memoryreleased into a body that has been carrying the trauma without knowing it. She's going to feel what was done to her before she remembers what was done to her.
"Can I get you anything else?" she asks.
"No," I say. "Thank you."
She walks away. I eat. The pork shoulder is good. Marco is having a good night. Devon's doing the broccolini right for once. The restaurant is warm and full. Plates clinking. Conversation. Javi's cocktail shaker. The kitchen radio playing something low.
I eat as my brain clicks over information in a slide show. One. Two. Three. There’s no room for anything except memories of the things I’ve done for this girl, and the things I have yet to do.
I leave cash under the saucer, stand, and walk to the door. Grace is at the bar talking to Javi. She looks up when I pass. I hold her gaze for one second, then push through the door into the cold.
Tomorrow I'll get back to the car and burn the bag. The only evidence that the Marinos ever existed will be a folder of photographs, a bottle of pills, and a set of handwritten logs that say, "asset stable, medication consistent, no flags."
Eleven years, reduced to paperwork.
I go back to the apartment, shit, shower and shave, and then stand at the window. Grace's lights turn off at eleven twenty-six.
I don't go to bed. The clock is running now.
Everything that happens next is mine.
Chapter Ten: Grace
Sevenpillsleft.
They roll into my palm on a Tuesday morning, small and white, collecting in the crease of my hand while I sit on the edge of my bed with the bottle tilted. I've never counted before. Never had to. Linda has always sent more before I ran out. A package in the mail, pharmacy label printed, my name on the bottle, refills handled by people I've never met at a pharmacy I've never visited. The pills just appear. Or I go to Linda’s and we have tea and she gives them to me when I leave. Remembering back to our last conversation, she wants a visit.
One goes in my mouth. Dry swallow. The other six go back in the bottle. Six days.
Four rings when I hit her name on my phone. It goes right to voicemail. "Hi, you've reached Paul and Linda. Leave a message."
"Hey, Linda. It's Grace. Running low on my prescription. Can you let me know when I can swing by and grab the new bottle, thanks."
She'll call back today or tomorrow. The pills are the one thing she's never been late on.
The walk to the bodega takes three minutes. Rosa scolds me for looking like a ‘skin walker’ and then jabs at my ribs and tells me she can set me up with her nephew, I just have to give the word. Apparently my biological clock is ticking.
Rolling my eyes, I drink the coffee, leave the two dollars, and walk to work. The last few nights have been rough. Not insomnia, but a restlessness pulling me toward the surface every few hours. Two more flashes this week. One in the shower: the rough cold texture under my hands again, longer this time, three or four seconds, with the sound of water dripping somewhere and the smell of something chemical. The other came while I was rolling silverware at closing. Just a color. Red, but a very specific red, dark and thick. Then gone, and I was holding a knife wrapped in a napkin and staring at the wall with no idea how long I'd been standing there.
Javi doesn't know about either one. He'd say therapist. He'd be right. I'm still not going to do it.
He comes in at five forty-two.
The door opens and the cold pushes through and then he's filling the entrance, blocking out the street behind him. Table four is open. He sits. The chair protests under his weight, that familiar creak that makes Javi glance up from the bar.
