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Her breath grew tight again. She unlocked the door, then, out of habit, opened it just enough to slide through. Poppy had never met a stranger at the house before, and though Mila was pretty sure the sweet puppy didn’t have it in her to bite someone, she wasn’t so sure about knocking them to the ground and loving them to death.
“Hey, Poppy, baby,” she greeted, rubbing her hands over the dog’s ears and face and shoulders. “I know I’m late. Do you need to go out? Please need to go out because if you don’t, that means I’m gonna be finding puddles somewhere. Come on, sweetie. I’ll race you to the door.”
CHAPTER 3
Everything was my fault. They told me that every day, that I was a bad girl, that I made them do bad things, that everything wrong in their lives was because of me, but they never told me what I was doing wrong. If they had, I would have fixed it. I would have changed. I didn’t want to be bad. I didn’t want to make them be bad.
I didn’t want anyone else to die because of me.
My father liked to play a game with me. He stood me against a wall, the heels of my shoes pressed against the baseboard, my shoulders against the Sheetrock. “Don’t you say a word,” he said. “If you do, I’ll have to punish you. Do you understand?”
I knew what was going to happen next. I racked my brain to find a way around it, to avoid the slap that would jar my teeth so they felt like they’d come loose in my jaw. I obeyed him. I didn’t say a word. I just nodded, slowly, because I knew it was the wrong thing to do but it was also the only thing I could think of.
He bent, his face inches from mine, his breath smelling of beer and whatever food he’d last eaten. “Do you understand?”
Tears of fear and dread and helplessness started forming. I nodded again, and he bent so close his nose practically touched mine.
“I don’t know why you make me do this. Your mother says you’re stupid, but I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you do it on purpose. I think you like to make me mad. You know I don’t like yelling at you, and I damn sure don’t like punishing you, but you do it anyway. You make me do it anyway.” By then, his eyes were glittering with hate and insanity. He was a mean man and a crazy man, and I didn’t know which one was worse.
“One more time,” he breathed, his voice more dangerous the softer it got. “If you say a word, I will punish you. Do…you…understand?”
I couldn’t hold it back no matter how I tried. I knew, no matter what my choice, the result would be the same, whether I said a word, whether I didn’t. “Yes!” I cried.
The next thing I knew, I was on the floor, certain that this time he’d broken my jaw, my cheekbone, a tooth or two. He stood over me, staring down at me with such disgust. “One simple thing,” he said, and he called me by whatever name they’d given me that month. “I just wanted you to do one simple thing, and you couldn’t. It’s your fault. It’s always your damned fault. But you’d better learn, brat. You’d better learn good, because next time I won’t go so easy on you.”
Then he walked away, leaving me on the floor, crying as quietly as I could. He was right. It had happened so many times. I should have been able to figure out the right thing to do by now.
But I was stupid. I was bad. And everything was all my fault.
—Excerpt, The Unlucky Ones by Jane Gama
Listening through the door, Sam smiled. So Milagro might not be polished at human interaction—or maybe it was man/woman or cop/woman-who-didn’t-like-cops—but she obviously adored her dog. He hadn’t had a pet in a long time, but he believed that, in general, people who loved pets couldn’t be all bad.
Sure, and now he would meet up with a serial killer who volunteered at the animal shelter and adopted and lovingly cared for all the animals his budget could afford, while carving up people as if they meant nothing.
After Poppy thundered away from the door, Sam took a seat in one of the rockers. He didn’t mind the heat of the day so much. It was summer in Oklahoma—expected. It was when they reached this part of summer, when the temperature after 10:00 p.m. was still in the eighties and the humidity was just as high, that he got tired of it and started wishing for fall. Trouble was, neither spring nor fall lasted nearly as long in Oklahoma as they should. Some years, sleep in late and you missed them.
