“Cooking’s a good skill to have.”
“Especially when you have a sister who works as much as mine. She’s so busy catching criminals and helping keep us all safe. The least I can do is make dinner a few times a week.”
He slows down at the mention of Lee. At the reminder: I have someone waiting for me at home. She’ll hunt him down and gut him with a paper clip if he hurts me.
The celery gets added to the pan, and I stir the softening vegetables around. The mayor settles down on a stool set on the opposite side of the kitchen island, and I grit my teeth. At least if he’s here with me, it means he can’t be upstairs with Wes.
I unwrap the chicken from the butcher paper and set it on the cutting board. He’s watching me so closely; I know if I take a deep, steeling breath like I want, he’ll notice. So I take the knife and begin to break down the chicken like Raymond taught me to do. I’m good with knives and I’ve never been squicked by raw meat, so teaching me the basics had been his way of bonding that first year, when he was still in hard-woo mode with Mom and me.
I slice the chicken apart, separating the flesh and bone and skin with the deftness of a surgeon, and when I glance up at the mayor, he’s staring down at my hands with surprising intent.
“My son told me you don’t hunt,” he says.
“I don’t,” I say, setting aside the chicken legs and wings before splitting the breast into halves. I switch to a smaller knife to trim some of the fat off.
“You sure know how to use a knife.”
“I just know how to cook.” And then, in direct contradiction to my statement, I twirl the little knife. It’s showy and it’s bitchy and I shouldn’t do it, but I do. Because I want to throw him. Because I’ve already decided: I’m going to gut him my own way.
He gets off the stool. “I should check on Wes.”
My hand closes over the butcher knife to my right before the words are completely out of his mouth. His eyes fall to my hand, and mine stay on his. I don’t make a move to chop at the chicken or disguise the fact that I’m holding on, because he’s right: I do know how to use a knife.
“That’s okay,” I tell him, that smile back on my face. That casual, naive smile. “You’re so busy, I’m sure you want to go straight to your office to relax. I can do it.”
But he pushes. Because they always do. Because you draw a line, and they’ll walk right over it. I know you, something that’s maybe purely me whispers inside. I’ll end you.
“If he’s sick—”
“I’ve got it, Mr. Mayor.”
It’s like time freezes and then backtracks between us, because the look he gives me has me feeling twelve years old again. But I don’t lose hold of my knife this time. I tighten my fingers around it. And I don’t run.
“I do have a lot of paperwork to get done.”
“I can let you know when dinner’s ready,” I say, wishing I could lock him inside and get Wes out before setting this entire place on fire.
“You do that,” he says, before turning and leaving the kitchen. My breath tangles in my throat, half scared he’ll head right up the stairs to prove he’s in charge. But his steps continue to click against the stone tile that leads to his office; there are no soft thuds up the wooden stairs, muffled by the antique runners.
I sag against the counter as the vegetables hiss and heat, on the edge of burning.
I don’t let go of the knife.
It takes almost two months for Wes to heal. We try to keep everything clean and bandaged, but with just Steri-Strips to hold everything together instead of stitches and staples, it all keeps breaking open again. It heals so much rougher. His shoulders are new terrain now; the old scar that taught me we were the same is bisected with sensitive tissue that’s purple-fresh and livid against his skin.
He tries to shrug it off, what happened. He tells me he doesn’t want to talk about it. That he’s fine, even though he spends hours alone in the not-guest room, reading whatever books Lee gives him.
His newfound reading habit gives me the time I need.
I fall out of normal so easily, it’s laughable now that I ever thought it might stick. It’s naive to think a few years with Lee would undo anything. I just locked it up, but now I’m free.
So I make two plans. I get leverage. But I don’t lie in wait.
I go and find him.
The mayor likes to go shooting on Sunday after church. He likes to go alone. Just him and his rifle and his thoughts up in the deer blinds as he picks off Bambi—badly, because of course he’s a shit hunter on top of being an abusive asshole.