Page 94 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

“Karishma?”

“Grace hasn’t been at school in a couple days,” she says quietly. “I don’t know if you’ve talked to her, but I haven’t heard anything, and …”

“You think she’s in trouble.”

“I do,” Karishma says. A man’s voice rumbles in the background. Mitesh, I surmise.

“I’m going to take care of it,” I assure her. “This time tomorrow, it’s all going to be over. I’ll be at his liquor store right when it opens. I’m going to end it.”

“That sounds a little … I mean, don’t do anything stupid. Like, don’t go back to prison.”

“Don’t worry about me. Grace is going to be okay. That’s all that matters.”

Karishma’s sigh crackles in my ear. I wait for her to protest again, but nothing comes. We hang up after a few moments of silence, and I lift my face to the sky, committing the warmth of the summer sun to memory.

CHAPTER

28

August 25th

7:18AM

IWAKE WITHthe sun. I smoke half a pack of cigarettes on the trailer porch as I watch it rise over the nearby grove of trees, dandelion yellow. One hour until the liquor store opens. Every second is a bullet.

I am caught between preparing to die and fortifying my resolve to live. It seems foolish to bet on either outcome. He may shoot me on sight. He may do me the courtesy of a conversation before shooting me. He may mortally wound me. He may leave me with only a flesh wound. He may be sensible and listen to me. He may trick me into thinking I’ve persuaded him and shoot me in the back when I turn to leave. He may really kill me. The possibilities are horrifying in their endlessness. My father is a grenade with the pin already pulled. There’s no telling when he will explode and how much carnage will ensue when he does, and the uncertainty is what frightens me most. If I knew I was going to die, I could at least say a prayer for my soul.

And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.

I picture my father sprinkling my remains in a landfill. What a sick twist of fate that if I die, my ashes will belong to him.

I dump the dregs of my coffee onto the lawn. I scratch Zenobia behind the ears. I slide the switchblade into my bra.

And then I drive to the liquor store.

Most of the vagrants on the street are still asleep, some in sleeping bags, some on cardboard slabs laid across the sidewalk. A small group plays blackjack on the curb, substituting bottle caps for chips. The dealer wolf-whistles at me when I pass.

I tell myself I am no longer seduced by bloodlust, no longer intoxicated by the thrill of revenge. I tell myself this is strictly business, a loose end demanding to be tied up. I’m not sure if I believe it, but I am leaving violence as the last resort, and surely that counts for something. It must mean I’ve changed, even a little, that I see a different means to my end.

The bell on the door chimes when I walk in. My father is not behind the counter, but he calls out from the back stockroom. “Be with you in a minute!” He grunts and groans over the bottles clanking together.

I snatch a shot-sized bottle of vodka from an endcap and down it in a single gulp. It burns on the way down and sours my stomach instantly, the liquor pooling in my gut like an oil spill. I fight to keep from retching as I put the bottle back where I found it, among a graveyard of empty friends. I’m the umpteenth person this week to do this. My finalfuck youto my father isn’t even unique.

His footsteps are leaden. He stops in the doorframe, a beer bottle in his hand. We look at each other like a deer spotting thehunter who has it in the crosshairs. I don’t know who is the deer and who is the hunter.

“You must be deaf, butterfly. Clearly you didn’t hear what I said when you crawled onto my porch.”

I keep my voice even and calm. I can’t be weak, but I can’t be too strong either. “I came to talk.”

“You and I got nothing to say to each other.”

“You don’t, but I do.”

“That’s the problem with you: always looking to have the last word.” He gathers his greasy shirt above his holster to remind me of his Springfield. My cheekbone throbs at the sight of it. “If it’s so important, spit it out.”

“Grace should come to Missouri with me.”

I mistake his pause for contemplation, but it is mockery. His laughter rattles between the liquor bottles. “And what other wishes can this genie grant you?”

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