AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What?” I say because I don’t know how else to respond.
“Yeah, the one named Fortune,” she says.
“What happened?” I ask her.
“There was a terrible storm that night. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been home,” she says, her tone a little wistful. “When they were both drunk, I couldn’t bear to be under the same roof. But the river was already swollen from rain a few days before, so it was flooding. I was trapped in the house, and they were fighting. Over the last beer. Fortune had opened it and Daddy snatched it from him. The bottle broke, and Fortune stuck the edge of it into Daddy’s neck and he bled to death right there while my mother and I hid under the dinner table,” she says dimly.
I convulse in horror. That’s unimaginable.
“I love where I come from, but I could never live there again. I was trapped between two terrors and it was only when one was gone that I was able to escape the other,” she says, her eyes distant and dull.
She’s drawn her knees up to her chest, her heels rest on the edge of the window seat cushion and her feet are dangling off the edge. Just then, I can see her as a young girl, sitting on the edge of a river bank, her long hair hanging off one shoulder as she looks over it at the danger behind her. Her toes being tickled by the water while she listened for the danger at her front.
“Did he hurt you?” I ask, even though I absolutely do not want to know if he did. I know that if she says yes, I will never rest well. Knowing someone hurt this woman, and I will never be able to make them pay.
“Of course, but he also made me stronger. I always fought back. I never took my beating lying down,” she says, and I want to go and find her brother and spare him the comfort of that needle.
“Well, am I free to go?” she asks quietly.
“Free to go where?” I ask, truly confused.
“Don’t you want me to leave? Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing you’d wanted to know and avoid when you ordered the background check?” she asks.
“For a smart woman, you’re pretty damn obtuse,” I say. “I told you why I ordered it, and that by the time it came through, I didn’t care what it said,” I remind her.
“And you care now?” she asks quietly.
“Did you not hear me earlier?” I ask and place my hands on her shoulders.
“Which part?” she says. Her smile is small, but it’s there, for the first time all day. I skim her arms and the sweep of all of that unbelievably soft skin at my fingers makes me want to take her clothes off and pull her supple body against mine and show her what my words have failed to.
That I need her constantly.
That she owns me as completely as
I own her.
That I love her endlessly.
“The part about you and me being made from the same combination of elements. About you being mine?”
“Still?”
“Tesoro, knowing didn’t change anything. In fact, it just showed me how alike we are.”
“Why? Are your relatives murderers, too?” she asks, and shoves her hands through her hair and looks up to the ceiling in despair.
“Maybe?” I shrug and think about it quickly. “I don’t know,” I say.
“Well, then, they’re not. If you had a murderer in your family, you would know it, trust me,” she says.
“Then, I don’t know that I would care. You’ve been shaped by the river, learned more from it than you did from the man who spawned you. You are not him. You have shaped me,” I tell her.
“Ha, right!” She laughs. I ignore her and press on. “You know the Mississippi River starts in Minnesota, right?” I ask her.
“Of course, I do,” she says.
“Well, at its mouth, it’s narrow enough that you can walk across it in less than a dozen steps,” I say.
