Page 90 of Lady and the Butcher
My mouth went dry.Did you tell him anything?
No, she wrote.I told him we didn’t accept solicitations and then I called Reese in from the back and stood where the cameras could see us both. He left.
I sent her a string of hearts because I didn’t know how to say thank you without telling her too much. I asked her to send me the footage, just to see. She said she would and that she’d already made sure today’s shifts were covered by two people.
I closed my eyes and let the relief hit. I also let the fear do what it needed to do. It burned clean for a moment. Then it settled into a low heat I recognized.
Not panic. Readiness.
I turned the phone back over. The screen was blank. I stood and paced the small room until I made myself stop because wearing grooves is not the same as moving forward.
What now?
Grandma knocked and came in with a bowl of cut fruit and a lecture. She sat on the end of the bed and patted my ankleand told me to let my dad walk me to the car at night like I was sixteen. She also handed me a little can of pepper spray that had been on her key ring since 1998. I kissed her forehead and told her it was a good color. She told me not to be stupid.
We went to their house for dinner because that was safer than anywhere that had a sign and a line. Dad grilled fish in the small backyard while the windows glowed warm. Grandpa told me the same story about a lightning strike on the bridge, and I let him. The repetition calmed me. The fish was perfect. The pie was cold. We watched the lighthouse cut the dark from the back step and, for a moment, I let the steady swing soothe what it could.
On the way home, I checked the rearview too often. The street was empty. The beads in the oak clicked when we pulled into the drive. Inside the house, Dad locked the door behind us and turned on the little lamp by the sofa.
I showered and stood in the steam until the mirror blurred. I pressed my palm to the cool glass and tried to see the woman I had been before all of this. Before Atticus. She lived there somewhere. She wasn’t gone. She was only layered under heat and fear and want. She could be found. I told myself that.
In bed, I kept the window cracked.
My phone rang before I could decide if I wanted it to. I answered because there was never a universe where I would not.
“Lady.”
His voice filled the small room. It came through the line with a weight that settled my bones. The word landed low in me and turned everything I was into a single point that hummed. I didn’t speak at first. He didn’t need me to. He heard my breath and read it.
“Who?” he asked. Flat. Not a guess. A demand.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Baseball cap. Scar by his eye. Quiet. He might’ve been the same guy who showed up at the shop in Charleston yesterday. Mei handled it.”
“Good,” he said. No warmth in the word. Approval, yes. “Did you see him more than once?”
“Twice. Near the bookstore. Then again by the artisan market. I cut down a side street and lost him.”
“You didn’t lose him,” he said. Calm like a shore that has watched too many storms. “He let you.”
Ice went down my spine in a thin, precise line. “Why?”
“Because he wanted you to feel seen,” he said. “Because someone wants me to feel what it is to be hunted.”
“Why here?” I whispered. “Why my father’s town?”
“Because you left,” he said. Quiet. Not accusation. Fact. “Because my name pulls a certain kind of trouble, and when I’m not beside you, trouble sniffs for your edges.”
Anger showed up. Not at him. At the audacity of men who think a woman is leverage. It burned bright and fierce and gave me back a piece of myself.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“What I’m for,” he said. “Close doors. Move pieces. Remind men that the cost of touching what’s mine is a bill they cannot afford.”
My breath hiked up my throat. “Atticus.”
“I am already on I-95,” he said. “Don’t open the door for anyone. Don’t leave your father’s house. Keep your phone on you and answer when I call.”
“You can’t just show up again,” I said, even as my body saidyes, yes, yes. “My dad. My grandparents. You can’t bring that world to their porch. You’ll have to explain to them …”
