Page 75 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

My father throws his empty beer bottle into the front yard. I can barely hear him over the television.Top of the order for the Rockies as we head to the eleventh inning …The light flickers through the sheer curtains. There are beers on the coffee table and a bag of Doritos on his recliner. “I said go home.”

“It’s an emergency.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“Grace!” I call into the house. “Grace!”

He shoves me back. I scrape my leg against the splintered wooden railing as I tumble down the steps, my full weight crashing against my hip as I hit the earth. My leg looks like it’s been fed through a shredder. Dried grass and dirt stick to the blood. The pain is enough to double me over, but I scramble to my feet anyway. He will always have the physical advantage, but I will always have more willpower.

“I saw the bruise you left on her.”

“You don’t know what you saw,” he says. “Get off my property. Get out of Annesville. Go home. You wore out your welcome ages ago. Next time I see you skulking around my house, I’ll shoot you like a dog. If I hear about you talking to Grace again, manipulating her with your bullshit, trying to turn her against me, I’ll shoot you both.”

“Not if I shoot you first.”

“Oh, butterfly. I’d like to see you try.”

Mitesh Jadhav answers the door with a shotgun. The skin on his neck reminds me of a shriveled fruit peel. A perfectly round scar the size of a nickel marks the spot where the bullet flared through him. He assesses my disheveled state and lowers the gun, but doesn’t put it away.

“Little late to be knocking on doors unannounced, Providence.” He is one of few people who can make my name sound pretty. His accent softens its syllables.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Jadhav. It’s—” I gesture broadly at myself to acknowledge that I am aware how unhinged I look. My hair is matted from the rain, and my leg is still bleeding, and I am barefoot, and my feet are black from dirt. “It’s an emergency. I wanted to talk to Karishma.”

“About what?”

“Grace.”

He finally sets the shotgun down. “I don’t want my daughter dragged into any trouble.”

“I don’t either.”

Mitesh shakes his head and massages his bullet wound, as if to remind me the mere existence of my family means trouble. “You’ve been through a lot—you and Grace both—in the last few days, and I’m sorry for all of it, but I don’t want Karishma involved.”

“Mr. Jadhav, please. I’m trying to look out for Grace. I wanted to ask Karishma if she could keep an eye on her at school. She’s taken everything so hard, and I need to know someone is looking out for her.”

He sniffs out my lie immediately. “I’ll pass that along.”

“I’ll only take a minute.”

“Good night—and again, I’m sorry about your mother.”

I idle on the front porch after he shuts the door like an abandoned pet hoping their owner will have a change of heart, sure if I wait long enough and seem desperate enough he will relent, but my hope amounts to nothing. I get back in the car, turn on the engine, and scream until my throat is raw and my ears are ringing.

There’s only one place for me to go. Only one place I want to go. One person I want to be with. When she picks up my call, the crush of relief is so immense that it floods my eyes with tears.

My phone routes me south to Carey Gap, then east for a few miles along Route 20, the night black as pine tar and the highway apocalyptically desolate. I peel onto an unmarked dirt driveway. There is no name or address number posted on the mailbox, but there is a red-and-white sign warning me that trespassers will be shot and survivors will be shot again.

Towering hackberry trees line the driveway. My car trundles forward until the trees part to reveal a jute-colored Queen Anne house, three stories tall with a circular tower reaching up from the front corner of the house. The perimeter is awash in porch lights to atone for the darkness of the driveway.

My first thought: Clutter family. If someone fires a shotgun on the prairie and no one is around to hear it, did anyone fire a shotgun at all?

I bury the morbid image as soon as she steps onto the porch. I don’t want to entertain a universe in which Zoe could suffer such a fate. Even dressed for bed, she still takes my breath away. Dewy skin. Milkmaid braids. Pillowy lips, sticky with balm. She offers a one-armed hug before inviting me inside.

The interior exudes Victorian glamour with its botanical wallpaper, dark wood molding, and heavy velvet curtains—and while I find it charming, I also can’t dispel the feeling that I am appallingly out of place here, a pigeon among peacocks. Zoe escorts me into a parlor room with stained glass windows. A chandelier twinkles from the rosette sculpted into the ceiling. We sit on chaise lounges opposite each other, and as I settle into the cream-colored upholstery, I have the humbling thought that this piece of furniture probably costs more than my rent.

Zoe appraises my appearance thoughtfully, like an art collector who suspects a forgery, her mismatched eyes inscrutable until they reach the dried blood crusted on my calf. They pop open wide enough to fall out on stalks. “Sweet Christmas, Providence, let me get you a washcloth.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

---