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She knew many of the worst predators weren’t purely strangers. Some of them found ways to meet and interact with their prey before deciding to hunt.
It’s not your fault. And there’s nothing you could’ve done.
Hopelessness submerged her. The Corner was a lightning strike on a clear day. His choice to hunt them felt as beyond her control as her mother’s death. There was no relief in it at all, no revelation in the recognition that allowed for a way out.
What are you going to do?
Through the throbbing river run of her thoughts, she heard the dissonant clang of the guitar as the Corner dropped it to the floor. He must be rushing now, agitated. The door between the office and the entry flung open with a rattling crash.Click!The dim light in the entry went on. It shone through the vent like a weapon, slid again through the cracks in the stairs, around the knots in the boards. Where the light touched her, it felt like fire.
BAM! BAM! BAM! the footsteps rushed up the stairs, a bit of yellowed sneaker passing quickly by the vent, BAM! BAM! BAM!
It was too much, that sound, so loud it was like being inside a pounded drum.
Her son woke up andwailed.
14
They’d taken their sandwiches to one of the metal tables sitting outside the café and brushed off the accumulated crumbs left by the previous occupants. Although their daughter was tall for eight, she was still able to sit cross-legged on her chair, singing the old preschool rhyme as she folded herself in: “Crisscross applesauce, spoons in the bowl!”
A man came to the table and stood beside it, blocking the hot August sunlight. Backlit, the sun rimmed him like a painting of a haloed saint.
“I’m the manager,” he said. “Just stopped by to say welcome.”
Their little girl tipped her head back to look up at his preposterous height. She gave him the hesitant lift of her child’s smile.
“What a princess!” the manager exclaimed. “Beautiful.”
Something about the manager’s overlarge body, his wide head, his paleness, reminded her of wet sand. And yet in the intensity of his eyes sweeping over her daughter she saw a tight, rubber band energy.
“You got a cocktail there?” he asked the girl, pointing to her lemonade.
“No,” their daughter said. “I’m not old enough.”
“Well, I’d never have guessed!” The manager’s voice had the affectation of exaggerated shock common to adults teasing children. “I know you’re old enough to drive, though.”
The little girl shot him a flat, bored look before silently taking a bite of her sandwich.
Though his mouth was hidden by a mask, she was sure she saw a shadow of a frown cross his face at the way her daughter pointedly ignored him.
The manager cleared his throat, said sagely to her husband, “You’re going to have your hands full with this heartbreaker.”
“You have kids?” her husband asked.
“Not yet.”
She imagined under his mask the manager licked thick, chapped lips and rough stubble. His body, the brush of his eyes, his words—all of it repulsed her. She knew that aside from his size, objectively he was simply average. Medium features, medium hair color, medium age. And yet, some gnawing, ancient instinct curled in her stomach and tensed her neck to straightness. Warnings chittered and flashed and she thought,Be reasonable. He didn’t look at her like—like that. You’re in public. It’s fine.
“And check out this bruiser!” The manager playfully mimed a boxer. “How you doin’, big guy?”
“I’m great!” Their son grinned at the manager they way he did at all grown-ups. “How’re you?”
She melted a little at her son’s sweetness. His perpetual bright sunniness.
“Best-behaved kids we’ve had in yet,” the manager said.
“Thank you.” Her husband smiled. “How long since you opened?”
The manager glanced over his shoulder at the café behind him, then said, “Not long. Rough time to do it, of course, but it had all been set up and paid for before—you know—all this.”
