Sloth (Sinful Secrets 1)

Robin Hood.

I’m not even surprised he set up something like that.

And yet, I’m so surprised. I don’t believe it—any of it. I can’t fly to New York with him. When the doctor tells me what she tells me, I take a taxi back to Chattahoochee, to my car. I see the swamp, the puncture in the rail, the road muddied from where they hauled his car out, and it’s meaningless to me. Like a scene from a film I watched while half asleep.

I drive straight to Kellan’s house and find it unlocked. I go to the windowed room and go to sleep, and wake up in a ray of thick gold sunlight. Afternoon, it seems.

I reach the river as the sun sets, pinkening the sky over the pine trees. The black cat joins me. When I start to feel ill and I know I need to move, she follows me back to my car and twines her sleek body around my legs.

“And if we catch her and we have to put her down instead?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I wish you wouldn’t say that.”

“It makes you sad to think about putting down a feral cat you’ve never even met?”

“I think pain should be reserved for something painful…”

I scoop Helen up and take her with me. I don’t know where I’m going until I realize I’m in Lora’s parking lot.

‘I’m here. Coming up,’ I text her as I look up at the third story.

I carry Helen up the stairs and knock and ring the bell. Lora’s not home, but there’s a spare key underneath the frog statue sitting by her mat. I take Helen straight to the kitchen, where I serve her water and a bowl of ham.

Then I pull a wicker chair out from the breakfast table and sit down.

Tired. I feel—

Don’t.

I pull my phone out of the pocket of the jeans I got from the overnight bag in my car, and turn the screen face down so I can’t see the texts or missed calls.

Denial burns inside me, prickly, unsettling. I stand up and start to organize the counter. Toothpicks, Lora? Three boxes of toothpicks? I move two dirty plates, a vase of crumpled roses, and a sheer pink blouse, then spray the grimy counter down with a bleach-based cleaner.

The air in Lora’s house is cinnamon-vanilla. It feels heavy, like the pressure of the water on a scuba dive, which I did once and hated.

I’m wiping the counter slowly, letting the bleach fill up my head, when my hand bumps into a stack of mail partially obscured by the toaster oven. The thing on top is from the power company. It’s marked urgent.

“Lora, Lora…” I tear the bill open and mount it on the refrigerator with a magnet. I wipe the counter two more times and then thumb through the rest of Lora’s mail. This girl makes me look organized. Probably because she has so much money. What’s a late fee? I thumb through her other bills but don’t see any that look urgent enough to justify my opening them. I’m setting the envelopes in a seashell-shaped pewter bowl beside her paper towel holder when a small, white square slips from the bottom of the stack. It flutters to my feet. I bend to scoop it up and...it’s addressed to me?

I blink down at my dorm room address, and something starts to buzz inside my head.

I set the post card down. The post card with the campus scene. I turn around to face the throughway between living room and kitchen, leaning my back against the countertop. I touch my throat, which stings, as if I swallowed a sharp chicken bone.

I turn back around, compelled, and as my hands grab for the post card—

Thwack!

I whirl toward the breakfast table. My phone has fallen to the floor. Vibrating. I step over to it. Face-down, so I can’t see who’s calling…

Dr. Marlowe’s voice echoes. “A relapse after three years… hasn’t sought treatment… team waiting for him in New York…”

I scoop the phone up, see the number, answer. “It’s Cleo.”

Desperate. Desperate. Desperately, I clutch the phone. I sink into a wicker chair. My mind cranks like an airplane: spinning slowly, faster faster…

Cindy. Be The Match.

My fingers tremble on my iPhone as she lets me know my blood arrived. I am a match. She starts to tell me things I know from last time. I stand up. Circle the kitchen. I step over to the counter, frame the post card with my fingers.