Page 45 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

“Of course,” I say without thinking. Sara is in the other room fuming at my stupidity.

Josiah saunters outside. He shields his eyes from the sun, even though his hat shades his face. He peers through my windows and scrutinizes my front bumper. (Thank God I took care of the damage from an old fender-bender before driving out here.)

And then he raps on the passenger window. “Unlock it for me? Just want a quick look inside.”

The gun.

I’ve forgotten about it. He hasn’t.

The dogs charge into the front yard. Sara stands tall on the metal steps to the trailer. “I don’t think she will, sheriff.”

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, Miss …?”

“Sara Walking Elk.”

“Sara then,” he says over the dogs’ rancor, his eyes drawn to my glove box like a magnet. “I don’t mean no harm. I only want a peek.”

“If you want a peek, you can come back with a search warrant,” she says.

“In my day, we called this making a mountain out of a molehill.” He waits for one of us to crack. A few moments ago, I would have, but Sara has given me enough backbone to holdfirm. “All right then. No harm done. I’ll come back with a warrant if need be.”

“This isn’t your jurisdiction,” she says. “You’ll have to go through my brother if you want to search anything on Long Grass.”

“I wouldn’t dream of treading on your sovereignty.”

She huffs at his sincerity. “You could start by shutting down the Annesville liquor stores. We’re a dry reservation. They shouldn’t be allowed to sell to us.”

“Sara, not now. Please.”

My protestation comes too late. She has hijacked the conversation, and it’s no longer about me or my mother anymore. She fits her feet into the gaps of the chain-link fence and lifts herself higher than the sheriff. My five-feet-nothing friend turns into a giant. “When else am I going to have his ear?” She turns to Josiah. “It’s blood money, sheriff. They kill us to keep the lights on.”

“Your quarrel is with the state of Nebraska,” Josiah says. “That’s far above the authority of the local sheriff.”

“Wehavetaken it up with the state of Nebraska. What did they say? Wait. Wait through years of bullshit court hearings and bullshit discovery and bullshit deposition. What happens while we wait? We die, and we watch people die.”

“I’m not unsympathetic to your plight.”

Sara unleashes a long breath. The fence rattles as she drops back to earth. “Hundreds of years of white men telling us what to do, telling us where we can live, where we can go to school, which deities we’re allowed to worship, and the first time we ask them for help, they shoo us away. Respectfully, sir? Fuck you.”

“She’d be twice the politician Zoe Markham is,” he muses once she hauls the dogs back into the trailer.

“Politicians have agendas,” I say. “Sara doesn’t. She wants people to stop dying.”

“We’ve all seen enough death and misery for one lifetime. It makes you tired.”

Josiah shakes my hand goodbye, but holds on to it for an extra beat. With his duties to his badge fulfilled, he eases back into the paternal role he has invented for himself. It is not his job to offer me comfort. I can’t understand why he does, and I chalk it up to another underhanded scheme. If he does make good on his promise to return with a warrant, he wants me to remember him as a good guy at heart, someone who showed me kindness in my hour of need. It will soften me up for an interrogation down the line.

“I really am sorry about your mother. I hope you remember the verse I shared with you.”

“‘Blessed are they that mourn.’”

“They shall be comforted. And so will you.”

It takes three drinks to rinse the memory of my mother’s maimed foot from my mind. By sundown, I’m too drunk to spell my own name. The Tyre pool hall thrums with life, the diehard Rockies fans replaced today by diehard Nuggets fans transfixed by the NBA draft. My universe has been pared down to noisily racked ivories and vodka sodas burning my throat when I swallow, the hot tang like vomiting in reverse. I whip my head toward the door every time the bell on the handle chimes. It’s only a matter of time before my father strides through the door. I’m just plastered enough to pick a fight with him.

As the bartender brings me my next vodka soda, my phone buzzes on the countertop. I keep it face down for a moment, my eyes closed, willing it to be Grace. Same as every time before, it isn’t. It’s a picture from Margot of my peace lilies, shriveling up and shredding their leaves. I shouldn’t laugh, but I do. First my mother, now my plants.

My phone vibrates again, but I see Kiera’s name on the screen before I can allow myself a morsel of hope.

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