Page 13 of Ruthless Consequences

The weight of Shawna’s stare rested on my face. I knew at some point I was going to have to meet it. I did without hesitation. “What?”

“Remember when I said Mousuallyintroduces his girls to one another?”

“Not in so many words, but yeah,” I said.

“He’s hiding who you are.”

I shrugged. “Not sure why.”

“You connected, Luci?”

“No,” I said, no hesitation. Because she would have known the truth if I would have even taken a breath to pause.

No, I wasn’t connected, because I severed those ties four years ago, but what was left still followed me around. Like jagged shadows stained with blood.

FOUR

LILO

PRESENT DAY

No matterhow many years had passed, whenever I pulled up to the same church, I could still see the blood. It didn’t stain the cement. It stained my memories. More than anything else in my life had.

Today, though, people lingered. Talking. Laughing. Enjoying the freedom they seemed to feel. All I felt was a chill in my blood when they stopped on those spots. It was like they were stepping on my grave.

The place where a piece of me was dead and buried.

I noticed her, though. Even though she didn’t make a big deal about it, she sidestepped the areas, like they were sacred ground to her too. A graveyard of her own. The last memories of something we’d shared and could never get back.

That was the reason she showed up every Sunday without fail. She’d told Minnie the world was running out of sacred things. Things we should always respect. And without that? We were a world without rules. Without consequences. Without hope.

“That is why we have rules, Lilo,” Minnie had told me once, trying to sound just like her older sister. “We learn respect.”

My Lucila was special—in her thinking, in her heart, in all ways. She was the reason why God had made women.

For men like me to understand the concept of contrast.

Everything she stood for, I seemed to do the opposite. Everything I stood for, she seemed to do the opposite.

Where she was soft, I was hard. Where she was hard, I was soft.

Our differences were almost shocking, but somehow it worked.

Or it had.

Until I killed that part of us.

I killed the only system that made me a human being. That made me a man. That made me sane.

Through a cloud of sweet cigar smoke, I turned the radio up, watching as Lucila and Minnie stood outside with a group of people lingering after the service. Minnie took off with a boy about her age, playing a game. Lucila stood off to the side, fiddling with the cross around her neck, while she listened to a woman go on and on about something. She wasn’t really listening, though. She was keeping an eye on her sister, though she was smiling as if she was entertained by the conversation.

Always smiling.

Even through the pain.

The pain I’d put her through. The pain of her entire life.

She wore a white shirt dress with a thick, tan-colored belt around her waist. Her chestnut hair, bordering on auburn, glistened in the sun. It was pulled up on the sides, her bangs fluttering in the wind, showcasing the delicate features of her face. If she stood out in the sun too long, a couple of freckles would appear on her nose.

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