Page 19 of Take Her

And I was happy when I heard Alonzo’s truck come up the road, with one of his girls bouncing in her car seat on the passenger side, squealing to be set free. He rounded the truck and did so, and the second her feet reached the ground she bolted straight for the fence line to duck under the lowest rail. Gracie went for her just as quickly, and started whuffling her down for treats as Alonzo came over to greet me, coming at a much more stately pace through the pasture’s gate. He was wearing dark slacks and a button-down bowling shirt with light stains under the pits. His very tanned and wrinkled face said he spent most of his afternoons drinking slowly on a porch somewhere.

I dusted my hands off on my jeans before shaking his—I’d been pulling weeds that morning. Alonzo was old school, the same age as Nero, a generation older than me, and his girls were his grandchildren—his son had gotten killed during a territory dispute outside a gun storage warehouse in Namibia. Theoretically, he’d gotten out of the game to help his daughter-in-law take care of them, but anyone who knew him knew it was because he had a broken heart.

“You always sleep with your windows open?” he asked, jerking his head towards the farmhouse, with a slightly concerned look on his face.

“The fresh air agrees with me, what can I say?” I stood up straighter and popped my back. I strongly doubted Nero would’ve sent Alonzo to kill me, or him come to do so with his grandkid in tow.

“Nero wanted me to check and see if you were up here.”

“He did, did he?” I asked, trying to sound conversational.

He looked over my shoulder, at where his girl was contentedly thumping Gracie’s neck and belly anywhere her grubby little hands could reach.

“Cut the crap, Rhaim,” he said, in a low voice. “What do you want me to tell him?” He pulled out his phone and gestured at me with it. “Phone reception up here’s notoriously shitty. I could’ve gotten his text this morning—but I also might not see it till tonight.”

I gave him a smile that passed for kind. Not many people would risk lying to Nero Ferreo—much less for my sake.

“You can tell him I’m here.”

One of his hoary eyebrows cocked high. “Right now? You’re sure?”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t hiding really—and I’d be damned if I got him or his girls in trouble because of me.

Who’d watch after Gracie then?

“There’s a safe behind one of the portraits. I switched the combination to be Jenny’s birthday,” I said, jerking my chin towards the little girl now roaming the field with my horse. Every once in a while she would clap her hands, and Gracie would pose dramatically for her, springing her tail up and lifting a foreleg, performing her old show tricks for her rapt audience of one. “Should be enough in there to keep Gracie in hay till she dies naturally.”

He grunted. “So it’s like that?”

I shrugged. “Could be.”

Alonzo stared me down and gave a long-suffering sigh. I knew he thought well of me—I’d helped him set up college savings plans for his girls. “Should’ve kept your nose clean, son,” he said, sounding disgruntled.

And my hands above the waist, where they belonged. I couldn’t help but chuckle darkly. “I know.”

“In any case, I’ll make sure to come up here my next few times alone. Don’t want Amy or Jennifer to see anything untoward.” He looked at his phone again, like someone unfamiliar with the technology. “I think the reception’s still shitty right now, though,” he said, feigning incompetence. “And I’m pretty sure the last text I got from you promised me a beer.”

“I’m certain it did,” I agreed, as both of us started walking back to the farmhouse’s porch.

8

LIA

I crawled into Mason’s bed beside him so that I could snuggle close, as carefully as possible, worried that I might break him, the same as I worried that the lack of touch might kill me.

—Sarah, from One of a Thousand Wishes by A. R. McGeorge

Every morning I texted my driver to come pick me up, right before the doors of Corvo Enterprises officially opened.

And every morning I went home, showered, and did the exact same thing—I stood facing away from my long mirror, craning my neck back to see what was left of Rhaim’s handprints on my ass, frustrated that they were slowly disappearing.

As the days counted down, I was worried the handprints were all I had left of him.

I bruised incredibly easily, inside and out, just like my mother.

Unlike her, however, I was still alive, despite some of my best efforts along the way.

And while I wanted to think that she wasn’t here anymore because she wasn’t as strong as I was—after all, I had lived through the things that had apparently driven her to an overdose—it was probably also fair to say that I was just less good at suicide.

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