If I can’t sleep, I should be productive and sort through my journals, find the ones from San Diego, but I can’t do it without turning the light on. It’s too late (or too early) for light that harsh and there isn’t an outlet close enough to the pile of notebooks for me to drag the table lamp over.
When I walk into the kitchen and flick on the soft, muted light over the stove, the bags of chocolate chips are still plopped on the counter. In the fridge, fake trays of cardboard covered in parchment paper hold small, lumpy balls of crushed Oreos, cream cheese, and sugar. Grabbing the cartons of heavy cream, I dump them into the one pot we keep out and set the burner to medium-low. Cream heats slowly, and you have to be careful not to boil it or it gets gross. When the little bubbles start flocking along the sides, I stir in some sugar, then drop in the chocolate and cover the mess, turning off the heat to let the cream melt the chips on its own.
The trays line up neatly on the counter, along with the box of toothpicks. I open the box so I can stick a pick into each ball, but my hands are shaking. I stare at them for a minute, trying to figure out if I’m pissed off, scared, or tired.
Or, you know, all three, because fuck.
But the answer really seems to be: need. Because I know what happened in San Diego, and what happened after we left; because patterns rarely repeat by accident; because Dad gave up and I’m not as strong as Mum . . . because Chavi’s death is a pain that does not, cannot, make sense, and I have trays full of ways to make it feel a little more real.
I pull the cover off the pot and stir it all together. As I use the toothpicks to roll the Oreo balls in the chocolate, my hands are still shaking. My stomach is still cramping with need. It doesn’t matter that I know it’ll make me sick, that the concrete pain doesn’t actually make the emotional pain any better. It doesn’t matter that I’ve learned again and again and again that it doesn’t help.
It just matters that it feels like it should.
When all the balls are covered in chocolate, I shove the trays back into the fridge to cool and set. I wish fridge doors could slam. It would feel satisfying, wouldn’t it, to know that at least for the moment, I haven’t given in to that?
Mum’s leaning against the doorway into the hall. The way her weight is slouched against the frame, her throat bared because her temple rests against the wood, tells me she’s been watching me for a while. “How much chocolate is left?” she asks, voice husky and a little thick.
“Some. Not a lot.”
“We’ve got a couple of bananas.” She shifts slightly, her toes curling away from the cold tile. “Mushier than you like, but not bruised yet.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
So that’s how we end up sitting on the floor of the living room dipping bananas into the pot of chocolate, a dozen or so fat white candles covering the various tables. I can’t magically make more bananas appear when the two and a half bananas are gone, and Mum takes the pot to the sink before I can think of looking for something else to dip in there.
“I was kind of expecting there’d be a dent in the truffles,” she says when she comes back, sinking gracefully to the carpet.
“You’d have stopped me after a few.”
“Yes. But I didn’t have to.”
“It doesn’t help.”
“When has that ever mattered, when you wanted it to help so badly?”
I don’t really have an answer for that—it’s not like it isn’t something I think every goddamn time—so I snag the edges of the bottom notebook and pull the closest stack in front of me. I find the lizard clinging to a leg of the Eiffel Tower and show it to her. “Split out anything from one-forty to one-eighty, just in case. That’s at least fewer to page through.”
“You came up with this when you were five?” she mutters.
“Nine. I had them covered in gift-wrap before that, but I redid all of the early ones when I decided I liked the lizards.”
By the time she goes upstairs to get ready for work, we’ve got the five and a half months of San Diego split out for me to read through. Mum being Mum, I have a feeling her next project is going to be putting the rest of the notebooks in order so they can be boxed up properly. Keeping them out won’t drive her up the wall quite as much as it would Eddison, but she doesn’t have much use for looking back.
I spend the rest of the morning logged into my virtual school trying to focus on schoolwork. I don’t have much mind for it, but in the Skype session with the instructor, I must look like hell, because she forgives me for it. She tells me not to worry about checking in until Wednesday, and if I need extra time just tell her, and everyday kindness feels so strange after the last twenty-four hours and I’m not even sure if I can put a finger on why.
But by eleven, I’ve done as much as I’m going to do, so I throw the journals in the backpack I haven’t used in months, carefully check over my nice camera and settle it in its case in the bag, and head out to chess. My pepper spray is a comforting weight in my pocket.
I don’t really expect anything to happen. Jonquils . . . those are an opening gambit. There’s time, as strange as that sounds. In chess, the fastest possible victory with resignation or forfeit is called a Fool’s Mate. It takes only two moves per player, but—and here’s the thing—it relies on White being extraordinarily stupid.
A reasonably stupid man might avoid detection if every murder is in a different jurisdiction, but this case has been in the hands of the FBI for seven years now; remaining uncaught all this time hints at someone not just patient, but smart.
The most interesting chess games are between opponents who know each other well. They know what the other is likely to do and try to prevent it at the same time they try to advance their own gambit. Every move requires both players to completely reassess the board, like a twelve-by-twelve Rubik’s Cube. I don’t know who killed my sister, but I know a fair amount about him. His murders tell a story.
He doesn’t repeat flowers, and he doesn’t taunt.
Whatever the jonquils mean—if they are from the killer—it’s only an opening move.
If they’re not from the killer . . . whoever it is already knows where I live. Trying to make myself a prisoner in my own house won’t make me any safer than continuing to go out.
I remind myself of that during the walk. I even mostly believe it.
Corgi’s out in the parking lot when I arrive, walking toward the pavilion with two cups of coffee in his hand. Not the Starbucks kind, just the crappy free shit the grocery store gives out in tiny Styrofoam cups for the seniors. He startles when he sees me, almost spilling the coffee over his gloves. “Jesus wept, Blue Girl, had a night?”
“That’s what we’re calling it,” I agree. “Looks that bad?”
“I wouldn’t want to meet you in a dark alley.” He gives me a head-to-toe once-over, then nods and sips from one of the cups. “Maybe not a lit one, neither.”
“How ’bout a parking lot?”
“I hear us soldiers are brave, or used to be.” He grins at me, and he really does have a nose out of a hobbit movie, but his eyes are clear. I’ve seen him after a bad day, and the week that follows. He’s doing okay.
Everyone’s there, including a very hungover Happy. Rather than take a seat, I clear my throat. “Does anyone mind if I take some pictures?”
The men look at each other blankly, then back at me.
“I take photos. It’s kind of what I want to do for a living. If it’s okay with all of you, I’d really like to get some pictures to keep once we move. Not posed or anything, because that’s awkward, but just . . . all of you. As you.”
Happy stares mournfully into his coffee, as if the answers to the universe are in there somewhere but fucked if he can muster the energy to find them. “You would pick today,” he sighs.
“Not just today. Sometimes.”