Page 111 of Devil

“It’s okay,” she says into the darkness. And then softly, “I’m tired of fighting the pretend. If this isn’t real, then I’ll play make-believe for as long as you’ll let me. I want to be here.”

My heart is full of glass shards. It takes me a long time to get the words out.

“It’s not make-believe, Birdie,” I whisper.

But she’s already asleep again.

The next morning is…administrative.

We go to an early Mass and sit in the back, Birdie staring at the rose window behind the altar, her shoulders hunched.

We get home and Birdie speaks with her sister, speaks with her boss at the gas station. Thanks to me and my illegal trust-starting, the farm property is insured, which should help cover the debris removal at the very least. Claims are filed for the trucks. I feed her frozen waffles on the couch while Lilith sleeps in her lap, and while she’s eating, I sit on the coffee table facing her.

“Why, Birdie?”

She doesn’t pretend not to know what I’m asking about, doesn’t evade or stall. But she takes her time answering, as she usually does, her eyes on her plate.

“There’s nothing but loneliness waiting for me. And exhaustion. And I knew that leaving youmeantmore exhaustion because you wouldn’t fund Busy’s trust past the time I stayed, but the dread of waiting for you to end things…I didn’t think I could survive it. Even if it meant I had to go back to my life before. But then I got to the farm and the reality oflife before, of life without you—” A deep breath. “I didn’t think it could ever feel worse than it did. But going back after falling in love with you…”

She stops, and this time, she doesn’t finish.

I take the plate of waffles from her hands and set it on the table next to me, and then I take her hands in mine. Lilith purrs on her lap.

There are so many misunderstandings between us, and they are all my fault. But first, I want to know: “Has this ever happened before?”

She knows I’m not asking her if she’s stepped in front of a tornado before yesterday, but this time, her pause before answering seems more like true hesitation than finding the right words.

“Yes,” she finally says, not looking at me.

“When?”

Another pause. “In recent memory? The day before you came to the barn.”

It’s my turn to pause. I regret taking her hands because I don’t want her to feel how affected I am and think she’s done something wrong by telling me. But something is rupturing in my chest, blood pumping into the cavities around my lungs, squeezing them, suffocating me slowly. It takes everything I have to keep my hands still.

“My leg,” she says after a long moment. “I told you I couldn’t afford the hospital, and that was true, but at home, I could have done more. To stop an infection. And I thought maybe if I didn’t, maybe if it did get infected and I did get sick, it would be God’s plan for me. It would be okay, not like I’d hurt myself for real.”

“Just, like, what then? Letting God hurt you instead?”

She nods, still looking down.

“We make the plans for us, Birdie,” I say, ducking so I can catch her eye. “Do you understand?Wemake the plans for us. We make the rules, we make ourselves, and we make a whole new fucking world if we need to. Not God, not the Church—us, you and me. And unlike God, I mean it when I say my plans are not to harm you.”

The balls of her cheeks don’t lift, but there’s something of a smile about their shape. “You and God.”

“He’s a fake friend. He wants to forgive me? He should want me to forgivehim.”

This does make her cheeks go the tiniest bit higher. “I’m sure God takes that very seriously.”

He better.

“I need to tell you the truth about something,” I say, and for this, I move so I’m sitting next to her on the couch. Sensing a disturbance in the cuddle force, Lilith wakes up, stretches until she shudders, and then morphs herself into a long swath of cat over Birdie’s thigh, her head hanging over the side. She immediately falls back asleep.

Birdie looks at me warily but waits, and I’m grateful for her patience because this is harder than I thought it might be. I’m generally not too worried about how I get what I want as long as I get it, and I’d planned on having this conversation in a very different context—months from now and with her so in love with me that she’d forgive a few devilish tricks. But telling her today, after she found the lockbox, after the storm…

I feel like a dick, honestly. And I was a dick toher, the one person in the world—who isn’t a Bell or isn’t married to one—I don’t want to hurt.

“I was always going to give you money for Busy, no matter how long you stayed with me,” I tell her.