Page 98 of Devil

“How can it not be that stark, Mary?” It’s my turn to hear my real name, both of us incised and resected down to the very origins of ourselves. Two Marys, identical but no longer the same. “You have no idea how many times I’d be in the worst place imaginable, desperately trying to get out, and the one thing I’d hold on to was that you’d never have to live through anything like it. That you’d never have to know what happens in cheap motel rooms and in the backs of strangers’ cars.At least Birdie is safe at home.I’d think that like a prayer.Birdie is safe at home. Birdie is safe at home.I never wanted you to have anything to do with the awful places I found myself in, and I never wanted you to have to make any of the same choices I did, and now you’re telling me that the price of my own mental health, my own place with a shower that works and a door that locks, isyou? You have to payyouforme? And you’re telling me that’s not stark? You’re telling me that’s not the bleakest thing you’ve ever fucking heard?”

Hurt curls the edges of her words and makes them waver and break. The anger is pouring off her—anger at Ryan, at me, at herself.

But I’m angry too.

I’m angry and I’m misunderstood and I’m suddenly so fucking tired of being the good twin, the patient twin, the one who absorbs everything negative, a lead shield for her unending radiation. When doIget to radiate? When doIget to fuck up? When doIget to have someone come pick up the pieces and pay any price just to see me safe and sound?

“Stop,” I say. My knuckles are white on the steering wheel. “Stop it. Stop acting like you’ve kept me safe all these years, like you did something noble by staying away. You didn’t keep me safe, Mary. All you did was make it harder and more expensive to rescue you when you needed it. Back home, people shook me down for money you owed all the time—I had three of my fingers broken because of you, and I slept with Grandpa’s pipe wrench under my pillow until the day I moved in with Ryan. I might not have sold sex, but I still sold things that hurt me to sell. I sold my sleep and my time to make art. I sold my feet and my knees and my stomach lining and my back. I sold my pride over and over again, and I sold the part of me that was able to hope…I sold the part that thought of the future with anything other than dread. I had to sell it all at market value, at whatever the going rate was, and I had to sell it cheap. I sold it because I love you, and I’d do it again, and I’d sell myself to Ryan in every lifetime if that’s what it took, because that’s what love is, that’s what laying down your life means, and I’m sorry that moving in with a person who wants to cook my meals and wash my hair and buy me blocks of wood sounds so much worse to you than sixty hours a week at Buddy’s carrying shrink-wrapped flats of oil and scraping gum off the floor. I’m sorry that I stumbled into paradise doing the same things you did when you stumbled into hell. I’m sorry for that. But I can’t change it. And I won’t.”

She sucks in a long breath. She’s crying.

And we’re pulling into her complex.

I turn off the car and unsnap my seat belt, and she unsnaps hers, but we don’t look at each other. We don’t move.

“You should have told me,” she says through leaking, sniffling tears. “You were supposed to tell me.”

“What would have happened if I told you, Mary? You saw Mom with your own eyes, you saw her come apart while I was trying to keep her held together, and you left anyway. You fucking bailed. Why should I think you cared about what happened to me?”

She starts crying harder, turning her face to the window.

I close my eyes, which are surprisingly dry. Too much has happened—Kaitlyn, the trust, Busy learning the truth—and I’ve clamped into survival mode. Made myself numb and empty and hard.

“I love you,” I say after a long time, long enough for the car to start baking under the September sun. “But you are the last person who can judge how anyone loves me. And if you want to, you should start with yourself.”

41

BIRDIE

I walk Busy inside,and she tells me stiffly that she’ll be fine, that she’s safe alone, and she proves it by putting the few sharp things in her apartment into a safety box that can only be unlocked by the support staff.

“I love you, Mary,” I say before I leave.

“I love you too, Mary,” she says, still sounding like I’ve shot her full of arrows.

I make her promise to call later.

When I get back home to the warehouse, I’m greeted by Lilith, who demands several minutes of attention before she’ll switch from flopping around on the floor under my scritches to murdering a nearby shoe, and then I go to the studio. Not to work but to settle myself. To look at the now-finished pair of criminals alongside the blank wood that’s supposed to be God incarnate and is nothing instead.

Maybe God has decided I’m no longer worthy to make such a thing.

I try tidying up the space, but I only feel more at odds in here, too inert and too restless, empty and full of a bitter ache I don’t entirely understand. I have no idea how to fix it. I obviously can’t talk to Busy, and while Amber and I have hung out a few times and have been texting back and forth, I have no way to even attempt explaining this situation to her. I’ve spoken to more people in the last few months than I have in all the seven years after Evelyn combined. I’ve even made a new friend. And yet I’m alone all over again right now.

Well, alone and with a kitten, which is something at least. Better than how it’s been before.

I scoop up Lilith, and she lets me without trying to eat my hand, purring so loudly that it shakes her whole body. I kiss her little head.

“I’ve been alone before,” I murmur. “I still know how to do it. I think.”

Holding her is comforting, and I’m able to warm my sluggish thoughts enough to consider what I need to do next. This trust Kaitlyn told me about. The one now holding the farm.

Right.

It’s early afternoon, meaning Bell won’t be home for another handful of hours, and I have the warehouse to myself. Including his office.

I set Lilith down inside the house, and she scampers off on a hunt for toys. I start my own hunt, not entirely sure what I’m looking for. A trust surely involves paperwork, but there’s no telling where it might be in the warehouse or even if it’s in the warehouse at all. Bell might have it at his office or at his dad’s house or in a safe-deposit box somewhere. I could be looking for something that’s never even been under this roof.

I don’t stop looking.