Stupid fucking names that Frankie picked out on her own.
The old woman, who had aimed her finger at my face once, years ago, threatening to kill me and bury me in her backyard,dragged them through the grocery store like she had any fucking right to keep them from me.
My kids.
My blood.
She had no fucking say over them, not any more than I did. Their father.
She paraded them down the aisles, herding them like puppies, stopping to talk to almost everyone like she couldn’t tell they were bored shitless.
And I followed a few steps behind with a cart I didn’t need.
Toby was taller than the last time I saw him on one of my visits. His face was sharper, older, but he was a mini-me, all the same. He didn’t even look twice at me as I pushed my luck and drifted closer in the cereal aisle.
“Toby,” His grandmother said as she walked away, “Pick out a cereal and let’s go.”
“I’m trying.” He argued, huffing as he stared at two boxes of sugary food that would rot his brain and his teeth.
I crouched down low a few feet away and pointed to the one between us. “That one’s my favorite.”
He blinked politely, like I was some stranger making small talk. “Mine too.” He said, and then turned back, but instead of grabbing the one I pointed out, he picked up the one with some cartoon hockey player on the front and ran off toward where his grandma paused at the end of the aisle, talking to someone else.
The kid had no clue who I was, technically, he had never met me.
Good. That meant I could teach him. I could teach him respect and the importance of rank.
Emmie though—Emmie knew.
When I tore my gaze away from Toby and stood to my full height, I found her eyes locked on me, peeking from around hergrandmother’s side. Her big green eyes widened the moment I stared back at her.
Her little hand gripped the cart like she was holding on for dear life. She didn’t speak, but her lip trembled as she ducked behind the old woman’s coat.
Almost as if I were the big terrible monster living under her bed, the shadow in the dark.
She remembered.
The fear on her face made her look so much like her mother, and my blood warmed with excitement. Frankie poisoned Emmie against me, filled her head with lies about where I was and why I wasn’t in their life, but her fear meant she remembered the truth about me.
Silently, I followed them from a safe distance. Every aisle.
Every step.
Emmie’s scared eyes searched for me around every turn.
I imagined walking up, snatching her wrist and making her face me head on. Making her say my name.
I imagined Toby’s confusion, the dawning horror when he realized the man talking to him wasn’t just some stranger but the man his mother told him was dead.
A real-life bogeyman.
But not here.
Not yet.
I wasn’t sloppy or stupid.
I had waited four years to make my last move against Frankie.
