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I spin when that little voice is a mere three feet behind me, to find Mia in the middle of my kitchen, wrapped in a towel large enough to drown her in fabric, and with puddles of water dripping at her feet. “I was calling you!”
“I’m sorry.” At my back, the door lockssnickand the handle groans as Minka releases it and walks away. Again. “I’m sorry, Moo. Uncle Archer was talking.” I scoop her up and head back toward the still-running shower. “What’s wrong?”
“I wanna wash my hair.”
“Oh?” I hold her tiny body in my arms. Her measly thirty pounds, and while I carry her, my stomach drops like a lead fucking balloon when Alana Lyons’ name flashes in my mind.
How?
How is it possible to have done to her the things that led to what Minka found when she had her on the medical examiner’s table? How can anyone be so depraved?
“I thought you don’t like washing your hair?” I attempt to push Alana aside. And Minka. And Diane. And the vigilante. And love. And, well… my entire fucking soul. “I thought you don’t ever wash your hair, Moo?”
“I wanted it to smell nice.” Glancing up at me with a smile as I set her to stand on the closed toilet, Mia’s eyes dance with something a little sly. “I smelled your shampoo and fink it smelled pretty. So I changed my mind.”
My shampoo?
Searching the room and casting my eyes to the still-running shower, I exhale a defeated sigh at the sight of pink shampoo washing down the drain, while the bottle—Minka’s—sits upturned and now empty on the shower floor.
“Did you squeeze it all out, Moo?” Crossing the small space, I reach in and rescue the bottle.
The weight of the empty plastic is just another punch to my gut. Because the only pretty-scented shampoo I possess belonged to Minka, and as though a cruel metaphor for the woman walking out of my life, the last of the pink swirls down the drain and disappears, with the hot water chasing it.
“It’s all gone, Moo.” I turn back and meet her eyes. “None left.”
