LITMIR.BIZ

       4

      Andy rolled over in bed. She brushed something away from her face. In her sleeping brain, she told herself it was Mr. Purrkins, but her half-awake brain told her that the item was way too malleable to be Gordon’s chubby calico. And that she couldn’t be at her father’s house because she had no recollection of walking there.

      She sat up too fast and fell back from dizziness.

      An involuntary groan came out of Andy’s mouth. She pressed her fingers into her eyes. She could not tell if she was tipsy from the bourbon or had crossed into legit hungover, but the headache she’d had since the shooting was like a bear’s teeth gnawing at her skull.

       The shooting.

      It had a name now, an after that calved her life away from the before.

      Andy let her hand fall away. She blinked her eyes, willing them to adjust to the darkness. Lowlight from a soundless television. The wah-wah noise of a ceiling fan. She was still in her apartment, splayed out on the pile of clean clothes that she stored on the sofa bed. The last thing she remembered was searching for a clean pair of socks.

      Rain pelted the roof. Lightning zigzagged outside the tiny dormer windows.

       Crap.

      She had dawdled after promising her father that she would not dawdle, and now her choices were to either beg him to pick her up or walk through what sounded like a monsoon.

      With great care, she slowly sat back up. The television pulled Andy’s attention. CNN was showing a photo of Laura from two years ago. Bald head covered in a pink scarf. Tired smile on her face. The Breast Cancer Awareness Walk in Charleston. Andy had been cropped out of the image, but her hand was visible on Laura’s shoulder. Someone—maybe a friend, maybe a stranger—had taken that private, candid moment and exploited it for a photo credit.

      Laura’s details appeared on one side of the screen, a résumé of sorts:

      —55-Year-Old Divorcee.

      —One Adult Child.

      —Speech Pathologist.

      —No Formal Combat Training.

      The image changed. The diner video started to play, the ubiquitous scroll warning that some viewers might find it graphic.

      They’re going to take you down harder than him, Laura. This is all going to be about what you did, not what he did.

      Andy couldn’t bear to watch it again; didn’t really need to because she could blink and see it all happening live in her head. She stumbled out of bed. She found her phone in the bathroom. 1:18 a.m. She’d been asleep for over six hours. Gordon hadn’t texted, which was some kind of miracle. He was probably as wiped out as Andy. Or maybe he thought that Laura and Andy had made amends.

      If only.

      She tapped on the text icon and selected DAD. Her eyes watered. The light from the screen was like a straight razor. Andy’s brain was still oscillating in her skull. She dashed off an apology in case her father woke up, found her bed empty and freaked: fell asleep almost there don’t worry I’ve got an umbrella.

      The part about the umbrella was a lie. Also the part about being almost there. And that he shouldn’t worry, because she could very well get struck by lightning.

      Actually, considering how her day had gone, the odds that Andy would be electrocuted seemed enormously high.

      She looked out the dormer window. Her mother’s house was dark but for the light in her office window. It seemed very unlikely that Laura was working. During her various illnesses, she had slept in the recliner in the living room. Maybe Laura had accidentally left the light on and couldn’t bring herself to limp across the foyer to turn it off.

      Andy turned away from the window. The television pulled her back in. Laura backhanding the knife into Jonah Helsinger’s neck.

       Thwack.

      Andy had to get out of here.

      There was a floor lamp by the chair but the bulb had blown weeks ago. The overhead lights would be like a beacon in the night. Andy used the flashlight app on her phone to search for an old pair of sneakers that could get ruined in the rain and a poncho she’d bought at a convenience store because it seemed like an adult thing to have in case of an emergency.

      Which is why she had left it in the glove box of her car, because why would she go out in the rain unless she got caught without an umbrella in her car?

      Lightning illuminated every corner of the room.

       Crap.

      Andy pulled a trashbag from the box. Of course she didn’t have any scissors. She used her teeth to rip out a hole approximately the circumference of her head. She held up the phone to gauge her progress.

      The screen flickered, then died.

      The last thing Andy saw were the words LO BAT.

      She found the charger stuck in an outlet. The cable was in her car. Her car was two and a half miles away parked in front of the Zegna menswear store.

      Unless it had already been towed.

      “Fuck!” She said the word with heartfelt conviction. She pushed her head through the trashbag hole and stepped outside. Rain slid down her back. Within seconds, her clothes were soaked so that the homemade poncho turned into cling wrap.

      Andy kept walking.

      The rain had somehow amplified the day’s heat. She felt hot needles stabbing into her face as she turned onto the road. Streetlights did not exist in this part of the city. People bought houses on Belle Isle because they wanted an authentic, old-fashioned, southern coastal town experience. At least as old-fashioned as you could get when the cheapest mansion off the beach ran north of two million dollars.

      Nearly three decades ago, Laura had paid $118,000 for her beachside bungalow. The closest grocery store had been the Piggly Wiggly outside of Savannah. The gas station sold live bait and pickled pigs’ feet in large jars by the cash register. Now, Laura’s house was one of only six original bungalows left in Belle Isle. The land itself was worth literally twenty times the house.

      A bolt of lightning licked down from the sky. Andy’s arms flew up as if she could stop it. The rain had intensified. Visibility was around five feet. She stopped in the middle of the road. Another flash of lightning stuttered the raindrops. She couldn’t decide whether or not to turn around and wait for a lull in the storm or keep heading toward her father’s.

      Standing in the street like an idiot seemed like the worst of her options.

      Andy jumped over the curb onto the sidewalk. Her sneakers made a satisfying splash. She made another splash. She picked up her feet and lengthened her strides. Soon, Andy had pushed herself into a light jog. Then she went faster. And faster.

      Running was the only thing that Andy ever felt she did well. It was hard to continually throw one foot after the other. Sweating. Heart pounding. Blood racing through your ears. A lot of people couldn’t do it. A lot of people didn’t want to, especially in the summer when there were heat advisories warning people not to go outside because they could literally die.

      Andy could hear the rhythmic slap of her sneakers over the shushing rain. She detoured away from the road that led to Gordon’s, not ready to stop. The boardwalk was thirty yards ahead. The beach just beyond. Her eyes started to sting from the salt air. She couldn’t hear the waves, but she somehow absorbed their velocity, the relentless persistence to keep pushing forward no matter how hard gravity pulled at your back.

      She took a left onto the boardwalk, fighting an inelegant battle

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