Page 89 of Lady and the Butcher
I had so many questions that I’d love to know the answers to.
I got up because lying there felt like waiting for a storm. I told Dad I was walking into town. He offered the truck. I said no. I wanted the motion.
Foolish? Maybe, but I needed to move.
The road into the historic district ran under oaks that reached for each other like old friends. The air tasted like salt and sugar and rain that hadn’t decided whether to fall. I breathed and walked and pretended I could be a person who took a break and let it work.
When I got there, St. George Street was thick with people and laughter. A line curled out of an ice cream shop that smelled like waffle cones and childhood. I slipped into a bookstore with bowed wooden floors and leaning shelves. The bell on the door rang and the owner looked up over small glasses, then gave me a nod that felt like a blessing.
I traced spines with my fingertips and tried to pick a book, as if reading could be a map out of myself. I picked three and handed them over. The owner tucked a used postcard into the stack. It had a picture of the fort and a smear of ink wheresomeone had tried to sign their name. I slid it into my bag and told myself to stop reading signs into everything.
On the way out, the bell rang again and someone brushed my shoulder. I saidsorry. The man didn’t. He was tall and narrow, with a face that would get lost in a crowd. A washed baseball cap. A sweat-darkened shirt. A scar like a fingerprint near one eye. He didn’t look at me. I told myself to keep moving.
I walked to the plaza and sat on a bench under a tree that had been there for more years than any of us deserved. Street musicians cracked jokes about requests. A bridal party squealed at a horse-drawn carriage and then did it again when the horse blew air through its lips. I texted Darla a photo of the fountain and she sent back a selfie with a clay mask on and a caption that saidself care is absurd sometimes. I laughed out loud and the woman on the next bench smiled like she wanted to be in on it.
I stood to toss my cup, and that’s when I saw him again. The cap. The scar. Leaning at the corner by the artisan market where leather bracelets hung. He looked up at the same moment. Not a coincidence. He looked away, too fast. My stomach dropped. The world narrowed until only angles remained.
I told myself this was a tourist town. People overlap. Strangers aren’t always signs. I started walking back toward Dad’s house, anyway. I checked my sight lines the way Atticus had taught me without saying he was teaching me. Windows. Reflections.
My heart beat too hard. My palm went slick against my phone.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I cut down a side street lined with old coquina walls and bougainvillea. The air was a little cooler there. Quiet in a way that should have been a gift. Footsteps sounded behind me and then stopped when I stopped. They started again when I did. The skin between my shoulder blades prickled.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I wasn’t equipped for this. Not really.
I slipped into a courtyard with a fountain and a gate that almost squeaked. I sat at a table and pretended to check my messages. The man walked past the opening and didn’t come in. He looked both ways like he was crossing a street that might be trapped. He kept going. I counted to sixty. I did it again. My hands didn’t stop shaking.
Finally, it seemed I had lost him. Thank God.
I took the long way back to the cottage. When I got there, safely, I stared at the live oak until the beads jingled in the breeze and I could breathe without tasting metal.
Dad watched me from the porch. “You okay?”
“I thought someone was following me,” I said. My voice surprised me. Small and flat and very far from the woman who tells other women how to breathe when everything hurts.
He got up slow. “Describe him.”
I did. He listened carefully, then looked down the street and then back at me. “You want me to call the sheriff? Doing so seems like a good move.”
“No,” I said too fast. “It might have been nothing.”
“It might not have,” he said. He looked at my face and then at my hands, which hadn’t stopped trembling. “Come inside.”
I went. He poured water and cut a lemon and handed me the glass. He didn’t make me feel silly for needing two hands to lift it—a small kindness. He leaned his hip against the counter and waited. The kitchen ticked. The house held.
I could feel Atticus in the room like a ghost. I could hear his voice.Stay where people can see you. Don’t give anyone a corner.I could see the way his jaw would set if I told him what I had just done. I could see his face when he looked down at my hands and then out the window and then at me again.
I went to the back bedroom and closed the door and sat on the bed with my phone. I opened our thread and stared at his name.
I typed.You just left. But I think someone followed me in town. I’m scared. Maybe you shouldn’t have left me.I stared at the words until my pulse hurt. I almost deleted them. I didn’t. I hit send and watched the screen like it might bite.
The house shifted and I flinched. It was only the air coming on. I laughed once, short and ugly. I needed to tell someone. I couldn’t tell Dad the whole of it.
I texted Mei.Quick question. Anyone been in the shop asking after me?
Her dots appeared fast.A man came by yesterday. Baseball cap. Quiet. Wanted to know our owner hours. Said he loved small businesses. Smile didn’t reach his eyes.
