Page 119 of The Next Lie

“So do you.”

His eyes lift to mine. The heat in them makes my face warm all over again.

“I know exactly what I’m doing, Reva.”

He turns and walks back toward the house, leaving me in the garden with swollen lips, stolen breath, and a kitten attempting to murder his own accessories.

When the French doors close behind him, I’m still standing there.

Bemused. Annoyed. Holding a leash attached to the least dignified creature alive. Homer twists in the harness, bites the strap, and growls at his own foot.

I look down at him.

“Don’t judge me,” I say.

He sneezes.

That’s fair.

Delia—

You sat across from me at dinner like we were enemies with table manners.

I kept looking at your hands. Your mouth. The way you held your glass. Stupid things. Sister things. Proof things.

You knew where to put the knife, though.

Every word. Every look at Deacon. Every little silence you and everyone else kept passing around like a serving dish.

I wanted to crawl across the table and shake you.

I wanted to ask if you still hate peas, but I don’t guess I needed to because you were eating them.

I wanted to ask if you remember stealing marshmallows from my cereal.

I asked about the marks instead.

You didn’t answer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

REVA

Homer hates the harness.

That’s not a guess. It is a complete philosophical position he has adopted with his whole tiny body.

He takes two steps across the patio, stops, stares at nothing, then flops onto his side like he has been shot by a sniper. The leash goes slack in my hand. His back legs kick once. His tail lashes. Then he lies there, dramatic and orange, waiting for me to understand the full scale of his suffering.

“I’m sorry life is so hard,” I tell him.

He blinks at me.

“But you’re doing great.”

He rolls onto his back and attacks the strap near his chest with all four paws.

“I’m proud of you, Speed-Ro, even if Deacon is an idiot for putting that thing on you. We’ll take it off when we go inside.”