Page 11 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

“No, really?” Karishma rolls her eyes. “You mean the sociopath who shot my dad in the neck isn’t a reasonable man?”

I wish I could say the revelation shocks me. My father makes a habit of threatening people with his Springfield; it’s moresurprising it’s taken him this long to pull the trigger on one of them. “He shot your dad in the neck?” I ask Karishma.

“Yeah. Last year.”

“What the f—what happened?”

“Something about the liquor stores,” Karishma says.

“Jesus, I’m so sorry.”

“I wish sorry paid his medical bills.”

Karishma does not speak again until I pull up to the Jadhavs’ house on Willow Street. The yellow bungalow is dark but for a flickering porch light. They too have aZOE MARKHAM FOR CONGRESSsign in the window. “Thanks for … everything,” Karishma says, her face brightening but falling short of a smile.

Grace squeezes Karishma’s wrist as she steps out of the car. They share a doleful look. “What she means to say is, Harmony would have let us sit there all night long, listening to Sheriff Eastman chew on his tobacco like a horse chewing its bit. So thank you for having a soul.”

Karishma climbs into the bungalow through an open window. Her clumsiness tells me it’s her first time sneaking out after curfew. I fiddle with the air conditioning for a few moments, hoping Grace will take the passenger seat without me having to ask. Our relationship is so fragile that something as simple as declining an offer to sit next to me will send me spiraling. I drive toward my father’s house at a snail’s pace.

“The car smells like an ashtray,” Grace says.

“Sorry. I usually don’t have other people in here.”

She tosses her head back when she laughs, baring a gap-toothed smile. Imperfect teeth run in the family. We never had enough money for dental work as kids. It’s only because of the thousands I shelled out on aligners that my bottom teeth no longer look like tilting tombstones. “I’m trying to tell you I want a cigarette,” Grace says.

“It’s bad for you.”

“Yeah, well, oxy is bad for Mom, but it doesn’t stop her from eating it like candy.”

She started taking Percocet to ease the pain of her broken bones and dislocated joints after I hit her with the car, but that was a lifetime ago. “She’s still taking it?”

“Give me a cigarette and I’ll give you the gory details,” she says.

“I don’t want you to start smoking.”

Grace rolls her eyes. “Oh, my God, spare me. I already have a vape. The only difference is cigarettes look cooler. I think it’s very Marilyn Monroe.”

I park beneath a chokecherry tree at the edge of what I think is a vacant lot, but if I squint hard enough, I can see a charred, collapsing house in the darkness. Someone has graffitied 666 in hot pink paint across the siding. Grace finally gets into the passenger seat. When she takes the first drag of her cigarette, I see myself in her again, how she closes her eyes and surrenders to the swell of dopamine.

“She’s been taking the oxy as long as I can remember.” Grace coughs into the crook of her elbow. It’s the only indication she isn’t as seasoned a smoker as she pretends to be. “She gets clean for a few months here and there, but she always falls off the wagon. Always finds some doctor to write her a new prescription.”

I draw from my cigarette to distract myself from the guilt, sharp like an icepick.I did this to her. I did this to her. I did this to her.“She’s always been that way, Grace. She’s an addict. Before you were born, it was gin. Now it’s oxy. It’s a—”

“A disease? You sound like Harmony. Don’t tell me you believe it too.” Grace scoffs. “She’s only addicted to oxy because of what you did to her.”

“I did a bad thing, Grace. I already know that.”

“Harmony hates you for what you did to Mom.”

Her cold nonchalance strikes me as an attempt to poison the well against Harmony rather than true statement of fact. I letthe question hang in the air for a few moments. “Don’t you hate me too?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

“Like, I know I should hate you,” she says, “but in a way, it’s like I can’t because I’ve never known Mom any other way. It doesn’t feel like you took anything from me. She’s always been too skinny and she’s always slept a lot. I don’t even remember what happened that day. I was too young. By the time I was old enough to ask, no one wanted to talk about it. Well, no one but Harmony, and she’s …”

“Difficult?”

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