Page 93 of A Killing Cold

Alexis knows that sometimes you have to do more than endure.

Her dad’s been teaching her how to drive. She’s not old enough for a license. But she looks older, especially when she borrows her mother’s clothes, wears her favorite sunglasses. Paloma always gets carded, but she hardly ever does.

She takes her mother’s car. She puts the rifle in the trunk. She isn’t going to use it, but it makes her feel more secure to have it. What does she know about this woman? She could be dangerous. She can’t be a good person, not if she’s doing this to their family. The gun will make her listen. The gun will make her understand.

The first part of the drive is easy. Cop cars pass her and don’t even glance twice. She checks her reflection in the mirror. No sign of tears. Red lipstick that Paloma bought her because it makes her look like a forties movie star. She looks twenty-three, at least. She feels invincible.

She isn’t expecting how difficult the drive up the mountain proves to be. The road has been partially cleared, but she’s never had to drive in snow like this, and the car slews, mires, lurches. She’s white-knuckled by the time she reaches the top, leaned over the steering wheel and panting, and she ditches the car by the gate rather than go farther. She can’t remember the code anyway. She gets the rifle from the trunk. Hoofs it.

She sees the woman from behind first. Standing by an old brown sedan, shoving things into the back seat. She has dirty blond hair, the kind that looks like dishwater, with cheap highlights shot through it. She’s skinny as a stick. Maybe that’s why Dad looked at her at all, tired of Rose with her three-children body and no time for the gym, and this fills Alexis’s adolescent heart with righteous fury.

And then the woman turns. That bony face, those too-big eyes, and they stare at each other for a moment of startled silence before the woman says, “Who the hell are you?” and Alexis realizes that as many times as she’s planned the biting words she’ll say, they don’t actually add up to anything but raw hurt. She can’t string them together into something sensible, so she stammers.

“I don’t have time for this,” the woman says, and starts to turn away, to dismiss her, toignoreher. Alexis raises the rifle.

“Stop,” she says. The woman freezes, mouth opening in a little O of surprise, and a jolt of satisfaction goes through Alexis’s belly. This feels like power. It feels like justice.

“Look, I don’t know what this is about—” the woman starts, and Alexis snarls.

“You don’t know what it’s about? You don’t know who I am? My name is Alexis Dalton. You’re fucking my father.”

The woman has the audacity to look puzzled. “Alexis? You’re Liam’s daughter,” she says, realization dawning. “No. Alexis. You don’t—”

“You don’t get to talk,” Alexis says. She is aware that there are tears streaming down her face. “You have to listen. You can’t have him. You can’t do this to our family. You’re going to leave, okay? You’re going to leave and you’re never going to come back.”

The woman laughs.

Shelaughs.

“What the fuck do you think I’m trying to do?” she says. “Alexis, just—” And she steps forward.

She steps forward and reaches out.

She steps forward, and the movement is sudden—

And shelaughed—

And she’s reaching for the gun—

And she’s destroyingeverything—

And Alexis is startled.

It’s the surprise that makes her finger spasm on the trigger.

It’s the anger.

It’s the way she lunged forward so suddenly.

She laughed.

The shot splits the air.

42

“I didn’t mean to. I swear I didn’t mean to.”

The buzzing is back. That drone of insect wings. I stare at Alexis, but it’s like the individual features don’t add up to anything. Lips, eyes, curve of a cheek, pert nose—not a face. Not a person.

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