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I pour more coffee into my cup. A week after Lila died and Barron and Philip hid her body wherever bodies get hidden, I went to a pay phone and called Lila’s mother. I’d promised I wouldn’t, had listened to my grandfather explain that if anyone found out what I’d done, the whole family would pay. I knew that the Zacharovs were unlikely to forget who had dug the grave and mopped up the blood and failed to turn me in, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Lila’s mother alone in that house.
Alone and waiting for her daughter to come home.
The ringing seemed too harsh. I felt light-headed. When her mother answered, I hung up. Then I walked around to the back of the convenience store and puked my guts out.
Grandad stands up. “How about you start on the upstairs bathroom? I’m going out for supplies.”
“Don’t forget the milk,” I say.
“My memory’s fine,” he shoots back at me as he reaches for his jacket.
* * *
The floor tiles of the bathroom are cracked and torn in places, and there’s a cheap white cabinet shoved against one wall. Inside are dozens and dozens of mismatched towels, some full of holes, and amber-colored plastic bottles with a few pills in each. On the shelf beneath that there are jars crusted with dark liquids and tins of powder.
As I clean silken balls full of baby spiders from the corners of the shower and toss out sticky, mostly empty shampoo bottles, I force myself to think about Lila.
We were nine when we met. Her parents’ marriage was coming apart and she and her mother went to live with her grandmother in the Pine Barrens. She had wooly blond hair, one blue eye and one green one, and all I knew about her was that Grandad said her father was someone important.
Lila was what anybody might expect from a girl who could give you nightmares with a bare-handed touch, from the head of the Zacharov family’s daughter. She was spoiled rotten.
At nine she beat me mercilessly at video games, raced up hills and trees so fast I was always three steps behind her long legs, and bit me when I tried to steal her dolls and hide them. I couldn’t tell if she hated me half the time, even when we spent weeks hiding under the branches of a willow tree, drawing civilizations in the dirt and then crushing them like callous gods. But I was used to brothers who were fast and cruel. I didn’t mind that. I worshipped her.
Then her parents divorced. I didn’t see her again until we were both thirteen.
* * *
Grandad comes back with several shopping bags around the time it starts to rain again, most of them full of Windex, beer, or paper towels. He’s also brought back traps.
“For raccoons, but they’ll work,” he says. “And they’re humane—says so on the package—so don’t get your panties in a twist. There’s no guillotine attachment.”
“Nice,” I say, lifting them out of the trunk.
He leaves me alone to carry them to the barn. The cats are in there; I can see their eyes gleaming as I set up the first metal cage with its swinging door. I pop the tab on a can of wet food, sliding it inside the trap. Something thumps softly to the ground behind me and I turn.
The white cat stands not three feet from me, pink tongue licking her sharp teeth. In the afternoon light I can see that her ear’s torn. Crusts of garnet scabs—fresh—run along the back of her neck.
“Here, kitty kitty,” I say, nonsense words coming automatically from my mouth. I open another can. The cat jumps when the lid cracks open, and I realize how tense I’ve been. Like she’s going to stand up and speak. But the cat’s just a cat. Just an underfed stray living in a barn and about to be trapped.
I reach out a gloved hand, and she shies back. Smart animal.
“Here, kitty kitty,” I say.
The cat approaches me slowly. She sniffs my fingers, and as I hold my breath, she rubs her cheek against my hand; soft fur and twitching whiskers and the edge of her teeth digging into my skin.
I put down the can of cat food, watching as she laps at it. I reach out to stroke her again, but she hisses, back arching and fur lifting. She looks like a snake.
“That’s more like it,” I say, petting her anyway.
* * *
She follows me back to the house. Her shoulder blades jut out of her back, and her white coat’s streaked with mud. I let her into the kitchen anyway and give her water in a martini glass.
“You’re not bringing that dirty animal in here, are you?” my grandfather says.
“She’s a cat, Grandad, not a cockroach.”
He regards her skeptically. His T-shirt’s covered in dust and he’s pouring bourbon into one of those big plastic soft drink cups that come with their own straws. “What do you want with a cat?”
