Page 84 of Lady and the Butcher
I stood there with the envelope against my palm and tried to talk sense into myself. It could be anything—a neighborhood flyer, a Bible verse from a zealot, a note from Grandma about zinnias.
I slid a finger under the flap and pulled out a single sheet.
LEAVE HIM.
The words were typed. No greeting. No signature. No other instructions. Three inches under them, a second line:WE KNOW WHERE YOU SLEEP.
I folded the paper back on itself because my hands didn’t know what else to do. I set it on the table. I set myself in a chair. I breathed through the urge to be sick.
Dad came out of the hall with a stack of clean towels and a whistle on his lips. He stopped whistling when he saw me. He looked from my face to the paper.
“What’s that?” he asked, voice mild by design.
“I don’t know,” I said. It was the truth.
He picked the paper up with two fingers and read it. His jaw changed shape like a door latch setting. He didn’t ask me who “him” was. He didn’t ask why someone would write that. He took two steps to the counter, opened the junk drawer, and came back with an envelope of old photos. He slid the note inside and sealed it.
“For what?” I asked.
“Evidence,” he said. “If we need it.”
I wanted to say that we won’t. The words died on my tongue.
“Do you want me to call the sheriff?” he asked.
“No,” I said too fast. Then, softer, “Not yet.”
He nodded once like that made sense inside his logic. “Then I’ll change the bulbs on the porch, and we’ll be the most well-lit house in North Florida.”
“Dad—”
“I know,” he said. “But I’m doing it, anyway.”
He went outside. I sat with my phone facedown and fought the urge to throw up and the stronger urge to hurl myself at a man three hundred miles away and tell him everything. I still hadn’t told Atticus I’d left. I had typed and erased and typed again until the drafts folder looked like a confession booth. I hadn’t sent a word. Some small, stubborn piece of me had wanted proof that I could make a choice that did not immediately end with his hand at the small of my back.
And here was my proof: a note that said my choices traveled.
Grandpa’s knock came heavy and cheerful. He didn’t notice the sharp air inside the cottage. He had grapefruit in a sack and an itinerary that involved the trolley, the Oldest House Museum, and lunch “where the hushpuppies taste like Jesus forgives you.”
We went because staying felt like an invitation to panic.
I let the trolley driver’s puns wash over me while the live oaks knitted shade overhead. Spanish moss hung like the city’s old-lady jewelry and clinked in the wind. We hopped off at the Oldest House and wandered through rooms that had held centuries of quiet. A docent explained coquina like it was poetry—shell fragments pressed into stone that could take a cannonball and shrug.
I wanted that. To absorb an impact and ask,That all you’ve got?
At lunch I texted Mei—Still in Florida at my Dad’s, shop is yours, you’re a saint—and she sent back,Enjoy.
Darla sent a selfie of a crooked eyeliner wing and wrote,Why won’t my face cooperate?I said,Try brown pencil, not black, and she sent back,I love you. Also Stephen looks gray—will you make him call his doctor?
The words pulled at me like fishhooks. Gray. I wrote,Make him go. I’ll text him tonight.
I still didn’t text Atticus.
At the Castillo de San Marcos, we stood under the bastions while a ranger in a straw hat loaded a cannon with ceremony. Tourists covered their ears. Grandpa didn’t. He winked at me. The boom rolled across the Matanzas and puffed a flock of gulls into the air.
When we came out into the light, my phone lit up.
Unknown number:You were followed this morning. Stop running to the water.
