9. Lila
Chapter Nine
LILA
The diner phone rings during the Sunday lull, and I answer it with a smile in my voice, because that's the job.
“Marvin's, this is Lila.”
“There's my girl.”
Four years, and the floor tilts. That voice, easy and assured, the exact same as it was the first day, back when I mistook easy for kind, and assured for safe.
“Still hiding behind a counter,” Shawn says. “Small towns suit you, Lilabelle. This one's real pretty. Nice school, too.”
My hand finds the counter edge. Across the room, Rosie is teaching Marvin a hand-clap game and he is failing on purpose. The sun is coming through the checked curtains onto the pie case, and this awful voice does not belong in the same world as any of it.
“What do you want?”
“To talk. That's all, baby. One conversation and I'm gone, if that's what you want after.” A smile moves through his voice. “The chain-up pullout south of town. Sundown. Alone.” He clears his throat. “I mean alone. If I see leather, I leave, and I won’t be as nice next time. Mountain roads are hard on motorcycles. And dogs…” He clicks his tongue.
“Don't.” It comes out before I can stop it, and I hate myself, because now he knows my weak spots.
“Don’t tell the old guy you work with or that little cook about this call, either. Sundown,” he says, pleasantly, and hangs up.
I stand with the phone in my hand, and the self-preservation part of me comes online, the part that packed bags in the dark for years.
Running means he follows, and now there's a trail of people behind me he's already marked as targets: an old man who buys crayons, a chatty best friend, a dog, my biker. I can’t let him hurt them. It would kill me.
So I won't run. But I won't let anyone stand where he's aiming, either. I've done every hard thing in my life alone. This is just one more to add to the list.
The plan builds itself in my head the whole afternoon. It's frightening how good I am at this.
Taryn helps without knowing it. “Wrench wants to cook you dinner tonight. Can we have Rosie for a girls' movie night? June's been begging to teach Rosie poker anyway. Don't tell the school. We’re looking after Waffles tonight, too.”
“Good. He gets anxious away from Rosie.”
That part's not even a lie. Where Rosie goes, the dog goes too.
At five, Rosie hugs me goodbye at Taryn's door with her overnight bag and Waffles' leash in her fist.
“Love you, Rosie-roo.”
“Love you to Saturn and back.” She's already turning toward June and sniffing the air. I hold on one second longer than I should, and then I let my daughter go. Waffles looks back at me twice on his walk inside, ears uncertain, the only one in the world who suspects me.
Wrench comes by at six with the ingredients for dinner from his mamá's recipe, and I meet him on the porch. I've been going over the sentences all afternoon.
“We need to stop.” My arms are crossed. My voice is flat and hard, and I aim it at the man I love. “Last night was goodbye. I just didn't say the word yet.”
He stops dead, the box in his hands. “Lila…”
“You want the truth? You were useful.” Each word is a nail and I drive it clean.
“The locks, the car, the dog at my door.
I needed to feel safe for a while and you were...
available. But I'm not one of your repairs, Wrench.
I never asked you to fix my life. And I'm not going to keep you around out of gratitude so you can finally feel picked.”
The sentence goes in exactly where I built it to go. It lands in the soft place he trusted me with, and his face closes down and it’s like a knife twisting in my heart.
“Okay,” he says.
Wrench sets the box gently on my porch rail. He looks at me one more time, and I keep my chin up and my eyes looking past him.
“Remember to bolt the door tonight,” he says, walking to his truck, and drives away without looking back.
I make it inside before I come apart. I slide down the door with both hands over my mouth and cry all the tears I've got in me until my eyes are swollen and red. Then I get up, wash my face, and I clean.
I clean the whole kitchen. I scrub the stove and bleach the sink and take a toothbrush to the grout, because when you’re scared it’s better to keep busy. By the time the sun starts leaning toward the ridge the room smells of lemon and looks like nobody has ever lived here.
Then I get ready.
I put on my armor. A dress I made myself.
Red lipstick, fresh, applied with a steady hand.
My phone goes in my pocket, charged, the voice memo app one thumb-press from recording.
I need evidence. And I know what I'm gambling.
But Shawn doesn't want me dead. He wants me back.
Everything he ever did to me was punishment for straying from that story, delivered behind locked doors.
Tonight I'm something he's winning back, and I’m counting on that.
I could be wrong. Prison could have made him someone with even less patience than he had before.
I look at myself in the hallway mirror, and a woman I recognize from a long time ago looks back.
I leave the porch light on, lock up and walk to the car in the last of the gold light, heading south out of town, alone.