Page 64 of The Devil She Knows
Sam unzipped her bag and dug around for her phone. The screen was busted, a spiderweb-like crack stretching from the top left corner to the right. She smoothed her thumb over the glass and tried to remember when the last time she’d dropped her phone was. She’d replaced it six months ago, maybe, after the touch screen had stopped working, but she’d dropped it before that. Several times.
3:42 P.M.the screen said. March fourth. Sam frowned. There was something about that date, wasn’t there? If only she could remember what it was.
There had to be something about this moment, something significant about standing on the northwest corner of West Seventy-Ninth Street and Broadway, something—
Sam turned her face in the direction of the wind, the sweet smell of violet and sandalwood cutting through the stench of exhaust. She’d know the smell of Hannah’s perfume anywhere.
Feeling silly, Sam followed her nose down the block. There was a Verizon store across the street in one direction, Zabar’s in the other, and something about seeing that orange sign, a sign she’d seen a hundred times before, triggered the strangest sense of déjà vu.
She paused, something in her gut niggling at her, telling her to stop for a second. To wait.
Ahead, a gaggle of high school-aged kids took off running, parting like the Red Sea around a woman trying to step inside the grocery store.
It was Hannah and—
Sam remembered this moment. Maybe notthisexact one, but the moment that came after.
With her wish, she had turned back the clock two and a half years.
Cold settled in her chest, spreading through her veins like ice water. She jammed the heel of her hand into her breastbone and dragged in a single ragged breath before the feeling of being watched crept over her.
Sam knew without having to look that it was Daphne.
“Are you just going to stand there,” she asked, coming up on Sam from behind, “or are you going to go in?”
Sam shook her head, in answer to which question she wasn’t sure.
“This is the day I met Hannah,” she said, listless. Her eyes were scratchy, dry from not blinking, from staring at thedoor Hannah had disappeared through. “We haven’t met. Not yet.” She turned to Daphne, who was already watching her, a somber look in her eyes. Sam turned back to face the street. “I wanted to go back to when … to when Hannah and I went wrong. But we haven’t started. How could …”
Daphne didn’t say a word, and Sam knew without needing to be told, without even needing to finish the question, the answer.
When her grandfather had died, they’d had a big church funeral for him followed immediately by a smaller, more private graveside service just for family. Once the casket had been lowered and her grandfather interred, flowers placed upon the freshly laid dirt, as everyone had started to leave, Sam’s grandmother had reached out and with a trembling hand brushed gentle fingers against Sam’s wrist. Sam had stopped and together they had stood beside the gravestone, silently.
Sam had never asked if her grandmother had needed another moment to say goodbye or if she had wanted to breathe in the space where her husband existed for just a minute longer, to linger, even if he was already gone.
She had never asked, and now, standing on the corner of Eightieth and Broadway, staring into the barrel of a future so foreign from the one she’d imagined only yesterday, Sam didn’t think she needed to ask.
Daphne stood beside her, stoic and still, silent as a statue. And maybe Sam was giving her too much credit, but it felt like she was holding space for Sam’s grief. Holding it, too, so in that moment Sam didn’t have to carry it alone.
After what could’ve been one minute or ten, Daphne held out her hand.
“Come with me?” she asked, the tenderness of her voice cutting through some of the static inside Sam’s brain.
Sam stared at her hand, at the lines etched in her pink palm, at the smooth rounded tips of her fingers. A hand that Sam knew was capable of shoving her against a wall with ease. A hand that was strong and agile, and right now looked soft and warm. She glanced at the store.
“This is my fifth wish,” she said, then winced. Even to her own ears, the words sounded a lot like bargaining.
“You haven’t ended the wish. You can come back if you’d like,” Daphne said. “For whatever my word is worth to you, I promise, Sam.”
Maybe this was just a trick, but something in Sam’s gut told her it wasn’t. And even if it was? Sam wasn’t sure she cared.
With one final glance at the grocery store, Sam closed her eyes and set her hand in Daphne’s.
14
BETWEEN ONE BLINK and the next, they were back inside the elevator.
Fingers tangled with Sam’s, Daphne guided her toward the chaise and pushed down on her shoulders until Sam was seated.
