Page 21 of Brutal for It
I turn slowly, like fast might give something away. The store’s the store: old men debating bacon brands like politics, a little girl asking her dad if we can get the cookies with the sprinkles, a young mom letting her toddler touch every single box of cereal because choosing is power. No one close enough to say that to my ear without me seeing it.
“How’s the scar?” the voice asks. “Still a line under your collarbone? I didn’t put that one there. Still pisses me off.”
My stomach lurches. I picture my sling, Tommy’s hands steady, Doc Kelly’s voice, the smell of antiseptic. I picture the shower last night, how hot I made it, how red my skin went.
“Who are you?” I hate how small I sound.
A chuckle. Soft. Intimate. “We both know who I am. You could find me if you wanted, baby. But you always have liked to play games.”
I stab the red button, hands shaking hard enough that the phone nearly slips from my fingers. It buzzes again immediately. New number. I decline. Again. Decline. Again. Decline.
The hum overhead gets louder, or my heartbeat does, or both. I put the basket on the floor because I don’t trust my grip and I squat, right there by the eggs, because my knees don’t belong to me, not for a second. I draw a breath in like I’m on the bottom of a pool and count it out. One to four, hold four, out to four. Head Case taught me that; so did rehab, so did Crunch when he sat on the porch steps with me once and breathed with me while the world pounded inside my throat.
A cart wheel squeaks behind me. “You okay, hon?” an older woman asks, bag of frozen peas in one hand, concern etched in her features.
I stand too fast, smile too bright. “Yeah,” I lie. “Just dizzy. Forgot to eat breakfast.”
She clucks and tells me about hypoglycemia and I nod and promise crackers. When she turns away, I yank my phone open and change it to airplane mode. It’s like slamming a door on a hand. The silence is immediate and total and I almost cry from relief.
“Get through the list,” I tell myself out loud. “One shelf at a time. Get through the list and go home.”
It works the way talking to yourself sometimes does. I move mechanically: bread, pasta, canned tomatoes. The store is bright and that helps. At the register I make a joke about bringing my own bags because it makes me feel like a saint, and the cashier laughs and calls me “green queen,” and I smile like a normal person with a normal brain.
The parking lot, though. My skin sizzles before my feet hit the line where tile turns to sidewalk.
I do the dumb thing—I look over my shoulder like the movie girl who’s about to get caught. There’s nobody looking at me. That’s the part that’s terrible. Whoever it is, he’s good at not being seen. Or he isn’t here at all and the call was a trick, a guess, a fishing expedition that got lucky.
The sun is high and punishing. It makes the asphalt sparkle. I push the cart the cashier loaded my bags in faster than I need to, sling the bags into the trunk with more force than they deserve. I should have just stuck with my basket. The back of my neck prickles. I can feel eyes, I swear I can, but there are a hundred of them in a grocery lot and none with a red arrow above them saying it’s me, the bad guy is right here.
A shopping cart slams somewhere. I jump, curse, and laugh at myself to keep from shaking apart. I get in the car, lock it, sit for a beat with my hands at ten and two, and I make a decision I hate: I don’t tell Tommy.
Not because I think he’d be mad at me for getting scared. Not because I don’t trust him to protect me. Because I can see the consequences ripple out like oil in water. He will go hunting. He will throw the pieces of our peace into a pile and light them if he thinks I’m in danger. He will make calls of his own. He will put his body between me and the world in a way that costs him. He will say it doesn’t, but I know the ledger of a man’s soul when he carries a woman like me.
I won’t do that to him unless I have proof. A face. A plate. A name I can write down that isn’t just a ghost calling.
“Coward,” a mean little voice whispers. “Liar.” I’m seriously going crazy. “Strategic,” I tell it back. “Adult.”
I pull out of the lot, scanning mirrors like a cop, like a thief, like both. A white SUV follows me for two blocks and then turns. A black pickup sits at the light and doesn’t move when I pass; it goes the other way. A silver sedan pulls up behind me where our road narrows and stays there three miles. I let it. At the turn for the compound, I go straight, then loop back around the long way, and when I come to our drive again, the sedan is gone.
I unload the groceries like a normal person having a normal day. I put the eggs in the fridge, the pasta in the cabinet. I stand in front of the sink and breathe. The house is quiet except for the tick of the kitchen clock. Which, if I were a superstitious woman, I’d say sounds like a heartbeat.
I take my phone off airplane, put it on Do Not Disturb with favorites break through only. I add Tommy, Jenni, Crunch, Doc Kelly, Head Case, Tank, Red. It’s a circle. If the past wants to get in, it’ll have to learn how to pick locks.
For the next hour, nothing happens. I text Jenni a photo of the ridiculous cereal I let myself buy because I was brave at the register, and she sends back a voice note that’s half cackle, half bring me some. I wipe the counters that don’t need wiping. I fold the towels that didn’t really need folding. I hum.
The phone buzzes in my back pocket.
I freeze.
Favorites only. It has to be one of them. I’m already smiling when I pull it out, already ready to say something cute about cereal to make Jenni laugh twice.
Unknown number.
The smile drops off my face. My thumb hovers. I don’t answer this time. I watch it buzz. It stops. Buzzes again. Stops. Again. A minute later, voicemail dings.
I don’t listen. Not right away. I put the phone face down on the counter like if I can’t see it light up, then it’s not. I rinse an apple. I bite it. The tartness makes my jaw ache. I chew and swallow and feel like a person trying to act like they don’t know there’s a bomb in the room.
“Fine,” I whisper to no one. “Fine.”
