Page 71 of Devil to Pay: Cutter

It’s as if he’s challenging me to turn away first. His scathing death vibes suffuse the entire parking lot. My whole body begins to tremble. Though, I refuse to give in to the fear and keep standing on my shaky legs, watching. When I don’t turn away, he quirks an eyebrow, nods his head, and rumbles out of the parking lot.

What was the point of that?

Bikers creep me out in general. Ever since I was a little girl. Men showed at our house one night, one bleeding profusely. My mother freaked, but my father helped them. I don’t know why he helped, maybe his Hippocratic Oath come back to bite him in the ass. But I remember a giant man, all leather and chains, staring down at me through his black beady eyes outside our kitchen, where my father helped the wounded man. He ran the blade of a hunting knife up and down his calloused thumb. Every so often pointing the tip in my direction. No words. Intent clear. First and last time I kept the company of a biker. I shudder at the memory.

The door to Lady’s opens. The noise pulls my attention from where Mr. Scary Biker Man tore out of the lot back to where it should have been the whole time.

Her leg, the pencil-thin leg of the one woman I not onlydon’t wantto deal with now, but Idon’t have it in meto deal with right now, hangs half out of a wide crack as if she’s stopped to talk again before leaving. Dressed for business in the obligatory thin, beige skirt suit, even though the woman hasn’t worked since college. And the only work she did then was to land her a rich husband. She’s probably inside, lecturing poor Mark, the bartender, warning him if he sees me to contact the mayor’s office right away. As the wife of the mayor, gossiping, manipulating, and strong-arming have become her fortes. She deals in them the way Mark the bartender deals in bourbon.

Better for us all she not see me.

I get back in my car.

Four missed texts. Two from the funeral home, two from people warning me not to linger in town any longer than I need to, and that “they’ll be watching.”Great.Not that I don’t have enough on my plate this week. I still don’t understand how anyone down here got my number in the first place?

That’s not true, Elise.They got it from Hadley. My refusal to accept this doesn’t make it any less true.

Before I take off, I call the funeral home. They put me on hold. While I’m on the phone, mayor’s wife Margo leaves the parking lot, only glancing my way. Barely taking in my nondescript, midnight blue Malibu sedan, turning her nose up as she passes. Tinted windows keep her from seeing inside. Margo drives a Lexus.

Hadley, my dad’s live-in girlfriend picked everything before I arrived here. His burial suit, the casket, the music, flower arrangements. Death is a racket, and she had no qualms about spending my money to ease her sadness. Apparently, my one and only job is to fund this operation since my so-blissfully-in-love father neglected to update his life insurance of which I’m the sole beneficiary. Just enough to cover taxes and the funeral. Which, after leaving me on hold for fifteen minutes, would be the reason given for why the funeral home had initially texted. They want their money.

Poor, poor Hadley. The sentiment gets repeated a good five times by the woman on the other end of the line in our short, one-minute conversation. That is, once she’d taken me off hold. Hadley is loved. Hadley is hometown, and I’m outsider. Not just any outsider—traitor, bitch, whore, or any combination of the former. Traitor-bitch. Bitch-whore. Sometimes, depending on how country they try to sound, someone will jumble the three together in a rather unintelligibletraitorbitchwhore, which is supposed to offend or intimidate me. But in reality, it makes them sound drunk. It’s hard to be intimidated by a country drunk.

As I make my way up Market Street, because every—and I do meanevery—town in Kentucky has a Market, Commerce, or Main Street, my foot hits the break of its own will to stop in front of the scene of the crime. The place where I first met Logan Hollister. Or as he’s also known, the reason I’m atraitorbitchwhore.

God, he was beautiful. And that day, he had eyes only for me. He and his cousin Beau were hanging out. Those two were always hanging out back then. Crew cuts, clean-shaven, expensive clothing. These guys were the epitome of the all-American boy-next-door jocks.

Beau was a grade ahead and already had his early admission to the University of Kentucky, or what everyone down here shortens to UK, for when he graduated. And he was beautiful, too. Good genes, the Hollister family. But as I said before, once Logan and I locked eyes that was it.

My dad had moved home after he and my mom divorced. It was undecided where I would live because my mom packed up and moved away from where we lived outside Kalamazoo to Denver. So either way, I’d be leaving my school and friends behind. Little did I know the impact of being born up north, in Michigan, would have on my acceptance in the community. Enveloped between the love and warmth from my father and the Hollister boys, I’d never felt the impact. Up north, we don’t think it makes a difference where a person hales from. But in a small southern town, it makes a huge difference. Especially once I no longer had the Hollisters to protect me.

We met the summer before our junior year. And obviously, that one day sealed my fate. I knew, just knew where I’d be living.

And his opening line was a doozy: “You’ve got kind lips,” he said. Big, bright smile full ofperfectly straight, white teeth.

Flattered and completely taken aback that such a specimen of masculine beauty would even speak to me much less send off a compliment, I smiled back. “I do?”

Totally fell into that one.

“Yeah, the kind I’d like to see wrapped around my—” But he didn’t finish. Waggling his eyebrows at me suggestively instead. The line shouldn’t have worked. Come to think of it, I should have been mortified. It was the eyebrow waggle that did it.

And thus began the reign of Logan Hollister and Elise Manning.

Life would be so different now if I’d just used my head that day. Walked away. Moved with my mother to Denver.

It still hurts. To think of what he might have been now. Whatwemight have been now. No use crying over spilled milk or dead boyfriends. The past should stay in the past.

Get in. Bury my father. Get out. It’s the perfect game plan, and in order to make it happen, I have to get this over with.

Every place I pass on my way to the funeral home holds some happy feeling which doesn’t fit with the way they treat me. My feelings versus their memories, I stand no chance at winning.

Mr. Delavigne, the funeral director, meets me at the door. He graduated with my dad—and as it were, Hadley’s dad. So of course, he’s none too thrilled to see me. Not that my dad’s death was my fault in any way. He fell off a ladder cleaning out the gutters on his and Hadley’s home. But I’d stayed away all these years, since the fallout with Logan, so that made me a terrible daughter.

“Just need you to sign some papers and write the check,” he says with as much curt punctuation in his tone as a businessman can without being outright hostile.

“Sure,” I answer, following him in to sign those papers and write the check.

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