Page 100 of Souls and Sorrows

“Want to know a secret?” he asks, staring out the windshield.

I nod, and he absently picks at a worn piece of the wheel.

“I struggled some with object permanence as a child. My parents could show me a stuffed animal, then hide it behind the couch, and to me, it would be like it just didn’t exist anymore. I wouldn’t search for it, wouldn’t try to reason where it’d gone. My brain would just flip a switch and move on to the next toy.”

I watch his mouth move as he speaks, committing the curve and spacing to memory.

“Sometimes, I’m afraid of that happening again. Specifically with you.” He looks at me, pushing his glasses up. “You are far too magnificent to stay, Little Nightmare. I think I’m just trying to keep you for as long as I can.”

Pain lances straight through my heart, but it’s not the same kind as before—it’s softer, more bearable. The type you feel when you have someone who cares what it would be like to lose you.

There’s an importance in permanence. It grounds us and makes life’s fleeting moments something special.

Because if you never know when it might end, you do what you can to make it last.

30

I don’t endup taking Cash to meet my mother, deciding to keep that little treasure for myself.

But I lie low for a few days, waiting for an opportunity to arise. If Mamma thinks I’m just showing up for no reason, she’ll be far more suspicious, and I don’t want her getting antsy. When she gets antsy, she runs, and I want the bitch to stay where I can find her.

If she had anything to do with Ricci Inc.’s disappearance, I’m certain she’s already looking for a way out.

A new text comes in from the unknown number—the one I haven’t heard from in weeks. I assumed it was Vitus at the other end, but with his bones buried out on some farm in Appalachia, beneath horse carcasses, it’s highly unlikely he’s the one sending the message.

Do not trust him.

That’s all it says, and I stare at my phone screen for a long time, trying to figure out what the hell they’re talking about. At first, I thought it was Vitus’s parents, but no one else seems to care about their case. In fact, last I knew, it’d been marked unsolved, and the two detectives assigned had moved on to other reports.

Stuffing the phone into my pocket, I throw a jacket on and brave the early December air, shoving open the car door and waving to Ronnie.

Mamma’s waiting when I get to the door, arms crossed as she drags a portable green oxygen tank behind her. My brows lift as she lets me in, and I point at the tank.

“Since when are you on oxygen?”

The look of disgust she gives me scrapes at my soul, but I ignore it. “When my goddamn lungs started failing and, suddenly, my OSAT wouldn’t stay up. Wonder what that’s about.”

I pause on my way to her living room. “Are you honestly suggesting I had something to do with your lungs, Mamma?”

Muttering something under her breath, she walks around me and drops into an armchair. She reaches over into the end table drawer, pulling out a pack of Marlboro Reds and her trusty old Zippo.

“Not like you’ve stressed me out, taking the company right out from under me.” She lights up the end of the cigarette, its embers glowing bright orange.

I move back a step, not liking the mix of oxygen and fire. “Should you be smoking?”

“Dio mio,shut the fuck up, Ariana. Don’t lecture me while I’m sitting here, dying.”

Something light and feathery bubbles up in my throat, but I swallow it down before a laugh manifests. “Whatever. I just came to find out what you did to the company.”

She takes a slow drag, resting her head on the chair. “What are you talking about?”

“Did you dissolve it? Spread it out among other crime families, like Papà did with certain jobs?”

“What are you—”

“Where’s the money? You’re practically a ghost right now, so I can’t imagine you’d be able to move it all yourself. Where’d it go?”

“Ariana, honestly, sometimes, you make up the most outlandish claims. I don’t know what you’re talking about, carina.” Her tone shifts, dipping an octave and becoming smooth. It’s her coddling, holier-than-thou voice—the one that says she knows something I don’t and she has no intention of telling me. But that won’t stop her from letting me know she has information I don’t.

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