Kit went straight for the door and busted in. Charlie turned toward the noise, a ray of recognition passing over her face. She wanted Charlie to run to her, but she just turned her eyes away, flat and unfocused. Was she drugged? Didn’t seem like Manny’s style. His charm was the only intoxicant he needed. Maybe, she thought with a start, Charlie didn’t want to be saved. Maybe he simply had her in his thrall, a force Kit knew too well. The idea that Charlie was there of her own free will scared Kit even more than him holding her captive.
Kit’s heart rapped so loudly she could feel it in her ears and eyeballs and all the nails in her hands and feet. She could not lose herself to this fright. She called upon the numbing, and the fear settled like silt in a lake after a rain, her breath now smooth and steady, and she could hear every sound in the room. The calm cleared the way for a single thought. Charlie needed her mother.
“Charlie,” Kit said. “I’m here, Charlie. Are you okay?”
Manny still had not turned to look at her. He fanned Charlie’s hair across her back. “Well, aren’t you the clever cat? How did you find us?”
Kit tried to keep her voice level. “Now don’t act like you didn’t mean to lead me here,” Kit said. “Clifford’s? The Dolly room? If I found you, it’s because you wanted me to.”
“It’s not about what I want,” he said. “It’s what she wants.” Charlie met his eyes and he put a soft hand on her back. “It’s okay, go ahead.”
Charlie clasped her hands together. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “We don’t get along anymore. You and me, we’re like . . .” She drifted and looked at Manny, then continued, “Siamese twins. We been stuck together too long.” She wouldn’t look at Kit directly. “I been thinking it’s best I go live with Dad.”
The words came out of her like cardboard, the words were not her own. Even so, hearing them weakened Kit at the joints. She could not let him win. He would expect her to unravel, to rage, to take Charlie back by force. But he would not let her go unharmed.
Then Charlie glanced at her, sharply, briefly, and Kit could see in her features a presence and a cunning she had not detected before. Charlie was not drugged or brainwashed. She was playing along. Atta girl, she thought with a swell of pride for her daughter. I couldn’t see through him, but you can. Kit set her machete on the floor and stepped over it as an offering of peace. She, too, would have to play along to get closer to Charlie.
“I didn’t come to take her away,” she said. “I came here because I thought about what you said, about us being together, us three.” She winced on the inside. Lying wasn’t her thing, and the words didn’t sound convincing. “I want to see if we can try to be a family.”
Manny’s eyes widened unnaturally, feigning irritation.
“Don’t you see? You’re the third wheel. No one invited you here; go on home.”
There was a wounded, flustered quality to his voice, like he had made up his mind and now she was complicating things. She probed his eyes, those brilliant blues, ever shifting, and found something in his face, a wanting she would handle deftly. He seemed to want her to beg. She sat down next to him and put her hand on his thigh. He didn’t pull away.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice hoarse and mellow, like that of a child about to fall asleep. “I shouldn’t have pretended you didn’t matter to me. That was my pride. Truth is, I looked for you coming down the drive every day since I left, hoping you’d come for us.” She tightened her grip on his leg. “Now that you’re here, I don’t want to let you go.”
Manny pulled Charlie to his chest and squeezed Kit’s hand so hard it buckled.
Charlie froze, her eyes wet at the corners. Kit caught her gaze and subtly shook her head, as if to say, Don’t react, keep calm. I’ve got this.
Something glimmered in Manny’s heart, the place where Kit had lived. It moved him to feel her come close. He wanted to believe his partner, his muse, was back. How long since she had cozied up to him like that? Had lowered her defenses and let him take over? How long since she belonged to him? His child, his mistress, his slave. A lifetime. And yet he knew he could not trust this Kit. She was biding her time. Trying to get close enough to take Charlie and run. She’d say anything for the girl. He stroked the ragged surface of her knuckles, scars he knew, one of them cut from his own teeth, a right hook landed just so. He prayed. He waited. Nothing. Then he turned to his once partner in crime, his only lasting love. Dark dashes for eyes, that sullen mouth, the barely there tits. Skin coffee-toned like his own, but chewed up like an old bull hide. Sure, he had worshipped her once, but her life was over now. Charlie’s had just begun.
“Stand up,” he said. She obeyed. Then he saw her steal a glance at Charlie, a signal. She would make her move any second. Soon he would have to kill Kit. And as he imagined holding her throat, squeezing the life from her, he was overwhelmed with fury and love.
Bye, old friend.
He reached out for her with his left hand, the one that wasn’t holding on to Charlie, and even as he did he was not sure if he would caress or kill her. Kit kneed him in the gut, and he doubled over, bringing Charlie down with him. Kit tried to pull Charlie from his grasp but he held on. The girl bleated for her mother. Manny rose and flung Kit with one arm across the room, shattering the picture window. A stirring show of strength, he thought. She collapsed onto a pile of glass on the ground. Then stunned, but steady, she rose. A viper, coiled, welcoming a trigger to strike.
Kit could not feel the wound but could see it was bad. There was a shard of glass the size of a hatchet head sticking out of her hip. Blood soaked her jeans and pooled in her boot. She wasn’t sure if she could walk, but Manny didn’t know that yet. She had to get Charlie back before she bled out.
“She’s not like us, Manny,” Kit said, leaning on her strong leg. “She’s good. She’d never hurt a soul.”
Manny clicked his tongue. “That’s not what I heard. I heard she did a vicious thing. I heard she knows how to fight and win.”
“You heard wrong,” Kit said. “She’ll never do your dirty work, not like me.”
“I already know her better than you do,” he said. He pulled Charlie close to him, his hand so tight around her arm that the skin where he held her dimpled and turned yellow. “You had your chance. Now it’s my turn.”
“Now it’s your turn to what?” she cried, trembling. “To rape her? To make her your slave? To take what’s good in her and poison it?” Kit took a step closer, a warm gush on her hip. She was dizzy and wouldn’t last much longer.
“I wanted you, I cherished you,” he said, furious. “Everything you have I gave you.”
A thousand feelings, long unspoken, rose to the surface, gasping for air. “You ruined me,” she said, losing hold of herself. For a moment, she couldn’t see through the tears, or hear anything but her own crushing sobs.
“You should have let me starve,” she said, and felt a bright anguish, fresh as a clean cut. “Please, just let her go.”
“There is no letting her go. I’m a part of her. She is me,” he said, wild eyed. “Look at her.” He held Charlie by the jaws like a prize hound. “She is us, Kitty Cat. You and me, together. A miracle and a sin.” At this Charlie began to cry.
Manny took Charlie by the arm and shook her. “Stop it, stop crying.”