Page 24 of Cain
The words only get louder with every passing day: She’s a thief. A liar. A whore.
Silverton’s small. Cruel in that small-town way. Once people decide what you are, they don’t let you change your mind.
I try not to listen. But I do. Every single word.
“You believe any of this?” Georgia demands as we prepare to close for the day.
“About what?” I ask, feigning ignorance.
“About Faith.”
I shrug. “None of my business, Georgia.”
“She’s not hooking or stripping,” Georgia hisses. “She’s cleaning.”
“Whatever.”
She shakes her head. “It’s easier, isn’t it, to hate her than to admit you might’ve ruined someone who was already clinging to the edge.”
“Georgia,” I snap, “If you don’t want to work for me, say the word. I’m not going to have you keep on it about Faith. She’s dead to me, gone.”
“You’re the most beautiful woman, inside and out, that I’ve ever been with, Faith.”
“Really?” The vulnerability in her voice, the hope in her eyes, undoes me.
“Your skin is like silk, Faith.”
“Hardly.”
I don’t want to think about Faith or listen to others talk about her.
Paula and Melody are all over it with vicious glee. I hate it, hate them, hate myself. I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore, and I don’t know what to believe.
“Is there any progress on the investigation?” I ask Kyle when he joins them one night, nearly two weeks since they let Faith go.
“What investigation?” Kyle looks confused.
“The theft,” I bellow.
People look at us, and both Paula and Melody look chagrined.
“Ah….” Kyle looks at my sister and then at me helplessly. “I…don’t know, Cain. Sheriff Z took the investigation over. I’m out of it.”
“What do you mean by that?” Melody screeches.
He lifts his shoulders in a helpless gesture. “I’m…I don’t know what’s going on with the Faith thing.”
“But Faith is still a suspect, isn’t she?” Melody asks in a way that makes my skin crawl.
Why do these two hate her so much? She’s never done anything to them.
Is all this anger on behalf of her stealing from me?
“I guess.” Kyle looks like he’d rather be getting a root canal right now than be talking about Faith. “She was told not to leave town.”
Paula and Melody look relieved.
I want to stop thinking about Faith, but I can’t let it go. Doubt keeps scratching at the walls of my certainty.
