Page 33 of Moth to a Flame

Trying to, at least. I stay put.

“…the hit attempt on her happened years ago.” Even without having the phone pressed to my ear, I hear Dad’s grave tone. “I’m sorry, honey. The assistant DA called to give us the heads-up. There’s nothing I can do. We need to have a family meeting to tell her. Can we come over?”

“Tell me what?” My pitch is higher than I intend it to be. “Impossible. No. They’re not letting him…” I remember Landon’s words, how I won’t be silenced. So I say the monster’s name. “They’re not letting Lester out. He’s only served a third of his sentence. He can’t walk.”

“I’m sorry, Sis.” Rosemary sighs, her shoulders sagging as she puts the phone on speaker.

“Regan, sweetie. They’re not letting him out just yet,” Mom comes on the line, her voice as high as mine. “It’s only a parole hearing. If they have an ounce of common sense, they’ll throw him back to the cell where he belongs. The ADA will be there to make his case.”

“Yeah.” On a reflex, I reach for Jigsaw, pull it out and aim it at the floor. “They’ll have to.”

“There’s another thing.” Dad clears his throat.

It’s so quiet over there. Usually, my parents have at least one of their writer friends hanging around the apartment in Manhattan in the evening. They eat, drink, and talk literature and murder mysteries well into the night, almost every night.

They don’t have anyone over today.

Complete silence.

“Yes, Dad?” All the confidence I had before with Landon has drained out of me. Nonexistent. My lungs are too big for my body, and they push and push and it hurts. I can’t stand it.

“The prosecutor said…” My strong, big father’s voice cracks at the end. I hear him sucking in a breath. Releasing it. “He said you could attend the hearing. Convince them this monster should never be let out.”

“No,” Rosemary says, her tone sharp and swift. “She’s not going anywhere near him. She’s not—God.” Her big brown eyes turn to me, brimming with tears. Two of them slip out. “No. There has to be something else we can do.”

Wetness runs down my cheeks. I’m crying too. I can’t talk. My hand hurts as I grip Jigsaw tighter.

In an alternate universe, Mojo is pushing his snout into my ankle. A woman who doesn’t have the stench of grass and rotten apples and blood in her nose, she feels Mojo’s snout. She’s comforted by it.

In this universe, on this planet, I only feel debilitating terror.

“Regan.” Mom’s gentle, careful, as she says my name. Like she’s about to cry herself. “You don’t have to, honey. What he’s done to you…I don’t believe anyone will ever let him out. Forget we said anything.”

“Your mother is right.” I wipe tears from Rosemary’s cheeks while Dad talks. I have to do something, or I’ll just collapse into myself.

You will never be silenced again.

I won’t. But it doesn’t mean that I want to get within a hundred miles of that rapist piece of shit.

Taking care of my sister, that brings me peace.

That, and the knowledge that Landon’s out there. That he’d kill him for me.

“I’m not going.”

It’s Rosemary’s turn to tug on her sleeve and swipe at my tears.

“He won’t get out.” I wrap my fingers around her wrist to lower it. “He won’t.”

“Okay,” Dad clips, then starts asking about the horror book club Rosemary and I go to, as if this entire conversation never happened.

That’d been our coping mechanism for years after I was assaulted.

We talk aboutThe Necro and His Girl. About how Rosemary has already finished reading the book. How I think the big twist is that Brawn, the necrophiliac main male character, gives Frida too much of the drug that makes her look dead and ends up killing her.

My sister gives me nothing.

I pretend to be hurt by her tight-lipped attitude.

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