Page 212 of What We Burn

Tomorrow the news will break. Two men found dead. A joint suicide pact. Matching confessions on the nightstands. Their families will issue statements, and the media will drag their names through every detail of the story they thought they’d buried.

There’ll be an investigation, but the notes, the toxicology, and the knives will all point in the same direction.

Two more rapists are dead.

Too many more still breathe.

It won’t be enough. It’ll never be enough.

FIFTY-FOUR

SAGE

“You’re humming,” Jamie says.

I look up from the coffee I’m pouring. “I am not.”

“You are. You’ve been humming for the last ten minutes. Something by Queen, I think. Possibly ‘Don’t Stop Me Now.’” He tilts his head, studying me over his laptop in an annoyingly perceptive way. “Sweetheart, you look different.”

“I washed my hair and I have mascara on.”

“No. It’s more than that. You look happy, Sage. It’s alarming. Should I be concerned? Did you join a cult? You joined a cult.”

“I didn’t join a cult.”

“That’s exactly what someone who joined a cult would say.”

I top off his mug and move to the next table, where one of our regulars, Frank, is working on his second cup and his daily crossword. He slides the newspaper toward me without looking up.

“Seven across,” he says. “Six letters. ‘One who serves.’”

“Waiter,” I say.

He squints at the grid. Writes it in. “Huh. That works.”

I move through the diner with the lightness of a woman who has slept through three nights in a row, which in my world is practically a spa retreat. The sun is coming through the front windows in thick, golden bars. Danny, the cook, is in a good mood, which means the specials are edible. The Tuesday Mom Squad is in their usual spot, and one of them actually smiled at me today. I smiled back without calculating the exit routes first.

Something's different. Not dramatically. Not the kind of overnight transformation that happens in movies where the heroine gets a haircut and suddenly her life makes sense. More like a tectonic plate nudging half an inch to the left—invisible on the surface, but everything built on top of it feels the change.

The texts are still coming. Milo says the route is still bouncing, but he hasn’t cracked it yet.

“Give me another week,” he said this morning through a mouthful of cereal. “Maybe two. But I’m close.”

In the meantime, I’ve kept my promise. Every message from a Brock number is caught and routed to all six phones. I don’t delete the original. I don’t hide how it lands. Holden logs it. Eli analyzes the language. Milo tears apart the route. Knox stares at each one like he could trace the sender through sheer force of will.

And then we move on, together, which is the part that still feels new—the together. The not-carrying-it-alone. The part where I’m one of them instead of being watched by them.

“Earth to Sage.” Jamie waves a hand in front of my face. “You just poured Frank’s coffee into the sugar bowl.”

I look down. I have, in fact, been pouring coffee directly into the sugar bowl for the last several seconds. Frank is watching with the resigned expression of a man who’s seen everything.

“I’ll get you a new sugar bowl, Frank.”

“Take your time,” he says. “I’ve been meaning to cut back.”

I dump the ruined sugar, replace the bowl, and slide back into Jamie’s orbit. He’s closed his laptop, which means he’s done pretending to work and ready to give me his full attention, which is both flattering and slightly terrifying.

“So,” he says. “Amy told me all about pajama night. Are we doing this or not?”