Page 106 of The Final Cut

Reva presses Play.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

REVA

My sister is in the kitchen.

That is the whole shape of the morning.

Not the rain tapping against the windows or the marsh lying silver and gray beyond the glass. Not the fact that Cal is still in the hospital, stable but unconscious, with Nash’s men and Shiloh watching over him in shifts. Not the fact that Isabel is alive somewhere in New Orleans, probably smiling over coffee while calculating how to punish everyone who took something from her.

Delia is here.

At the table.

In my clothes.

Alive.

She has both hands wrapped around a coffee mug and turns it slowly against the wood, clockwise, then back, then clockwise again. Her damp hair is tucked behind one ear, her wrists bandaged, the sleeves of my shirt pulled down over the edges like she can hide the evidence by covering half an inch of gauze. She sits with her back to the wall and her eyes on the room, tracking every door, every window, every shift of shadow, but she is here. She did not vanish in the night. She did not decide the cabin was another trap and demand to be taken back to Isabel. She did not exactly fall into my arms, either, but we watched half a horror movie together after midnight with Homer purring in her lap like a traitor, and at some point she fell asleep sitting upright with one hand buried in his fur, her head lolling forward.

I’ll take it.

I will take the bad coffee, the silence, the space between us on the couch last night, the fact that she still looks at me like I might turn into another wound if she blinks too long. I will take all of it because twenty-four hours ago, my sister was behind Isabel’s walls, and fifteen years before that, she was dead.

Now she’s at the table, frowning into a mug of coffee I made badly because apparently survival skills and basic kitchen competence do not overlap.

I stand at the counter with a mixing bowl tucked against my hip and stare down at batter that looks like spackle.

The box says muffins. The bowl says…structural repair.

I scrape a spoon through it anyway, because I need something to do with my hands and pacing seems to make Delia’s shoulders tense. Cooking—or the pretense at it—is quieter than pacing. Less likely to alarm all the heavily armed men in the house. Less likely to end with me stealing a boat and trying to personally murder an old woman in pearls.

Probably. Maybe.

“Do you think these are supposed to bounce?” I ask.

Delia’s mug turns once more between her palms. “Before or after baking?”

“That’s a bad sign.”

“I assumed as much.”

“I followed the directions.”

“Did you?”

I look at the box.

There were directions. I remember seeing them. There were also hospital updates, a security briefing, and the growing suspicion that Delia was pretending not to watch me ruin breakfast. “Mostly.”

Her mouth moves by a fraction. It is not a smile, but it is close enough to make me stir with renewed purpose.

The batter fights back.

I add a splash of milk, then immediately regret it when the mixture turns from paste to swamp. I make a small, private sound of distress and keep stirring as if confidence might thicken it.

Delia watches the bowl. From beneath my eyelashes, I watch her watch the bowl.