Page 37 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

“I spent the last couple hours with my father and my sisters. They talked about my mother, and now I can’t get her out of my mind. I know it could have waited until tomorrow, so I’m—” I cut myself off before I can apologize. All evening long I’ve felt sorry for existing. “Everything is so far out of my control and telling you about Mitch Perkins was the one thing I could control right now.”

Daniel sips his coffee the same deliberate way I take a pull from a cigarette, savoring every moment of the pedestrian pleasure. He sets the mug down beside his badge and his pistol. As much as he’s just a man enjoying a cup of coffee on a warm summer evening, he’s also an off-duty police officer surveilling his street at odd hours for mischief. “I understand. I appreciate you coming to me. I’m sure you don’t trust cops.”

“I went to prison.”

“And I think,” he begins, “I’m about to wipe away what little goodwill you have for me.”

“What?”

“They’re not interested in pursuing leads about your father.”

How convenient to have no interest in pursuing the one person who once wrapped his hands around my mother’s neck hard enough to leave palmprint-shaped bruises behind, who once crushed the bones of her feet beneath his steel-toed boot. Hell hath no fury like Tom Byrd. “They’re not even going to question him?”

“His alibi checked out,” he says. “He was at the liquor store.”

“I’ve seen Jell-O more solid than that alibi.”

“Eyewitnesses back him up,” he says.

“Because no one in the history of any criminal investigation has ever intimidated a witness, right?”

“Good God, you do not let up, do you?”

The purr of an engine jolts me to attention, but it’s only a lifted pickup truck barreling past the trailer. The neighborhood dogs bark and howl. “I’m sorry, I should have offered you a cup of coffee,” Daniel says as the dogs begin to quiet. “Can I get you one?”

Somewhere between my brain and my mouth, theno thank youI start to say transforms into “Yes, that would be nice.” I want to press pause for ten minutes and catch my breath. The trailer releases an air-conditioned sigh as he opens the door and goes inside. I comb the night sky for the few constellations I can recognize—Orion and his bow, Ursa Minor (or is it Ursa Major?), Scorpius and how its stars fray into a cat-o’-nine-tails. I reach my arms out in a dramatic stretch, Jesus on the cross, and when I lower them, I accidentally touch Daniel’s gun. He’s left it out here with me. I decide to see it as an act of trust rather than carelessness. Sheriff Eastman would never do it.

He emerges with my coffee, also in aWORLD’S BEST DADmug, this one devoid of feminine design. “I can get cream and sugar,” he offers.

I insist I like my coffee black even though this tastes like burnt firewood. Each sip intensifies my need for a cigarette. Caffeine is the poor man’s nicotine.

He notices me looking at the stars and asks about constellations, not because he is eager for an astronomy lesson but because he wants to be polite and we aren’t familiar enough to ask personal questions. He shares the Lakota name for Orion’s Belt,Tayamnicankhu.He talks fondly about Sara, and the depth of his love for her makes me dislike him a little less. At least we have that in common.

He excuses himself to get a sweatshirt from the trailer, once again leaving his gun behind. I’m so distracted by it that I reach for the wrong cup of coffee and gag when an unexpected flavorhits my tongue. Cutting through the coffee is the unmistakably smoky, nutty taste of bourbon.

A well-mannered girl would keep her mouth shut and put her head back in the sand where it belongs. But I’ve never been a well-mannered girl, and I can’t pretend to be one now. All that time waxing poetic about his sister and he can’t be bothered to uphold her deepest conviction, his own tribal law: no alcohol. When Daniel comes back onto the porch, I toast him with his own mug.

“You’re holding out on me,” I coo. “Maybe I wanted a splash of bourbon too.”

He looks at the mug. He doesn’t lie or invent an excuse. All he says is, “Please don’t tell my sister.”

Back at the trailer, Sara is curled up on the couch like a shrimp. A bowl of cornflakes teeters on her chest and threatens to spill when she waves at me. “You made it back alive,” she says, muting the TV. It’s a reality dating show, women in string bikinis and chiseled men frolicking around a beach house, not a care in the world beyond maximizing their camera time.

“I’m a cockroach. I’m unkillable.”

She points to the empty couch cushion with her foot. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I sit. “It was exactly what I expected. Triggers on triggers on triggers.”

“How were your sisters?”

“Damaged.”

“How could they not be?”

On the TV, a freckled girl sobs into the camera. Her eyes are swollen shut from the violence of her tears. The primal grief of first heartbreak.

“I think I was the nail in their coffin,” I say. “Maybe if I hadn’t done what I did—”

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