“It’s got protein in it. Allegedly.” She wrinkles her nose at the bowl, then brightens like she’s remembered something better. “I picked the paint, by the way. The one Nadia liked.”
“The gray-green one?”
“Sage. There’s a difference, remember?” She grins around the spoon. “You’re coming Sunday to admire it. I’m making everyone come admire it.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“You’d better not.” She points the spoon at me. “You’re on the Cascade run today?”
“Back by afternoon.”
“Bring me something that isn’t beige.” She says it like a threat, which for Kaylin, over food, is basically what it is. “I mean it.”
“No promises.”
“You never make any.” She’s already turning back to the bowl. “But that’s okay. I know you’d do anything for me.”
“You’re right,” I tell her, because it’s true. You don’t go through what we did and come out as bright as Kaylin without being something special. Most of the ones who got out of those places are broken in more ways than you can count. Kaylin too, I’m sure. She just hides it well, so people won’t feel sorry for her.
Which is why I feel so terrible about the way I got today’s trip. I told them I needed the morning without anyone else in the van. Needed the quiet. Needed to breathe. I let my voice catch just enough onbreatheto do the rest of the convincing for me. Nobody at Aurora questions a woman who came out of a Syndicate facility when she says she needs quiet. They just nod and wave you through, gentle, like sympathy’s the one thing they’ve got plenty of and they’re glad for the chance to spend it.
I used that. I took the gentlest thing anyone’s given me since I got here and turned it into two empty hours nobody will think to ask about.
You had no choice. It’s for Serenity.
It’s still hard to sit with.
The van’s already prepped when I reach the yard, and I pull out through the gate. The road down is the same road it always is—trees close on one side, the drop on the other, the engine laboring through the switchbacks. Out here, with nothing watching, I don’t have to hold the glamour up. It just sits there, quiet, without me spending anything on it. That should feel like a rest. Today it doesn’t feel like anything.
In person.
The words have been playing over and over since the call. All this time it’s been a voice on a phone—quietly threatening, butanonymous. Careful distance every time. Now they want to look at my face while they ask for more.
I think of the photo of Serenity in the sun, and the cold in her eyes.
She’s alive because I do what they say. I do what they say because she’s alive. I’ve walked that circle so many times I could do it in the dark.
I press my thumbs into the wheel and make myself breathe and watch the road come at me.
The depot sits at the edge of the town below—a gravel lot and a covered dock. I back the van in the way I always do. The clerk on shift knows the Aurora order without checking it twice, and doesn’t look at me twice either, which is exactly what I need from him. His assistant helps shift the pallet. I sign the return sheet, load the empties, and instead of turning the van back up the mountain, I drive into town.
The hardware store sits past the diner, the kind of place that’s held the same stock in the same spots longer than the man behind the counter’s been alive. The bell over the door announces me before I’ve gone two steps in.
He glances up, then back down at whatever he’s tallying. He doesn’t know me. The glamour makes sure of that. But he’s seen the van enough times to nod like I’m a regular, and that’s almost enough to make me feel like one.
“Help you find something?”
“Weatherstripping. And cable ties, the heavy ones.” I make myself smile as I say it, easy, like I’ve got nowhere else to be today.
“Back wall, left side. Foam-backed’s the only kind worth buying, if you want my opinion.”
“I’ll take it.”
I find the roll fast and bring it up with the box of ties. He rings it without any fuss, and I keep my voice light—agree themountain’s due an early freeze, laugh at something he says about the road icing over that isn’t really funny. My voice does what it’s supposed to. My hands stay in my pockets so he won’t see what they’re doing instead. I’m shaking like a leaf.
“Take care now,” he says, sliding my change across.
“You too.”
