Nothing.
Just silence and the hum of the refrigerator blending with my breathing.
I swallowed hard as I took another step. And another. The closer I got, the more something felt…off. Wrong in a way I couldn’t quite articulate. The red wasn’t glossy like fresh blood. It didn’t have the wet sheen. This was thicker and almost matte, crumbling where it had dried.
I reached for the knife with fingers trembling, but it was clear it wasn’t blood.Thank fucking God.I picked it up carefully, turning it left and right, trying to figure out what it was. “Mom?” I called.
No answer.
I squinted at the knife, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Then, before overthinking it, before common sense could kick in and stop me, I did the dumbest, most instinctive thing possible.
I lifted it to my tongue and took a careful lick, avoiding the sharp edge.
It was sweet, and my shoulders sagged in relief as I identified the substance. Gel icing, but definitely unmistakably not blood.
“You’re home.”
I yelped at the sudden voice and dropped the knife. It clattered against the counter, sending little red flecks across the white surface in a splatter. Whirling around, I spotted Mom standing in the doorway, an apologetic smile curving her lips. She was still dressed for her date, her hair slightly mussed, but no blood on her clothes or hands.
“Jesus, Mom,” I breathed, pressing one hand to my chest. “You can’t just…appear like that.”
She took in my face, and her smile softened into concern. “Sorry, how else am I supposed to appear? I didn’t mean to scare you. You okay?”
I looked from her to the counter, to the knife with its incriminating red smears, to the flecks of what was very clearly cake scattered across the tile. “I thought you—” I stopped myself, because I didn’t actually want to finish that sentence out loud. Didn’t want to put those words into the universe.
I thought you killed him.
Her gaze followed mine, tracking my line of sight, and she laughed. “Oh, that. Do you want some cake? I brought home the leftovers from the restaurant. It’s red velvet.”
“You used a combat knife,” I said slowly, each word carefully enunciated, “to cut cake.”
She shrugged like this was completely normal behavior. “It was the cleanest blade in the drawer. Everything else was in the dishwasher.”
“That is the most unhinged sentence you’ve said all week.”
“Low bar,” she teased, moving to the counter and starting to gather the red-speckled mess with a paper towel, wiping up the glaze. “Relax, Malibu. No bodies tonight. Just dessert.”
I leaned against the counter, suddenly aware of how wound up I’d been. “You have no idea what my brain just did to me.”
“I can imagine,” she said, giving me a look, noticing I was wearing someone else’s hoodie. “Rough night?”
I hesitated, my fingers finding the necklace at my throat. It was still there, still recording everything. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“Anything I should know?” she asked, pulling out a white cake box.
Part of me wanted to open up and tell her everything, unload all the stuff I’d been keeping bottled up, but another part knew that telling her would mean watching her slip into that other version of herself.
I shook my head. “No, nothing groundbreaking. And before you ask, I had no use for the condoms you snuck in my purse.”
She snorted and handed me a fork from the drawer. “Better safe than sorry. Eat some cake. It always makes me feel better.”
I took the fork and stabbed a generous bite of deep red cake, eating it right out of the white box.
Mom clicked the remote, and the small TV under the kitchen cabinet flared to life. She took a bite of the red sponge as the nightly news anchor’s voice came through the speakers.
“—and in local news tonight, police are searching for eighteen-year-old Sienna Michaels, who was last seen leaving a friend’s house late Tuesday evening. Authorities say this is the first disappearance in several months, but they’re concerned the pattern may be starting again.”
My fork paused halfway to my mouth, a bite of cake balanced precariously on the tines.
