Notes on an Execution(68)

Back to the very start.

*

The Blue House was a beacon in the night. Light flooded the interior of the restaurant, like a stage with no curtains. From her spot at the curb, headlights off, Saffy could see Blue and Rachel, working together behind the counter. Ansel sat at the bar, his fingers relaxed around the neck of a beer bottle.

Saffy watched, bruising. A summer moth clambered gently across the windshield. Blue skirted around her mother to wipe down the counter. Rachel held a wineglass up to the light. Ansel crossed his arms, hunched over the barstool. Saffy might have been watching two parents and a daughter, closing their restaurant late on a Saturday. They seemed comfortable. They moved with grace, the easy elegance of family.

The thought was heartbreaking, even in consideration: maybe this was nothing sinister. So simple after all. Maybe Ansel only wanted the same things Saffy did. To know, finally, where he belonged.

Her father was dead. Deceased. The only photograph she’d ever seen of him had disappeared after her mother’s death—she ached for it now. There were so many things she would never know. Her father’s childhood home, the God he had worshipped, his favorite pair of worn-out pants. The exact shade of his eyes, the inflection of his voice. This loss, a part of Saffy herself.

As Blue pantomimed something with her hands, Ansel laughed, his head thrown back. Their joy, palpable.

She hated him for it.

*

Saffy woke up in her car, dawn cracking misty over the lake. Fog swirled up from the water, a buggy cloud, already warm with July. She had not meant to stay, couldn’t remember dozing off—the exhaustion of the past few weeks had caught her unaware. She remembered Ansel’s truck pulling out from the driveway, the restaurant lights flickering off, Blue’s silhouette moving behind the upstairs curtain. Saffy’s mouth was thick and sour, her eyelashes caked shut with the makeup she’d applied before work the previous day. Her back twitched, spasmed.

It was early. Barely seven o’clock. Saffy drove, aimless, toward the mountains.

The trailhead was completely empty. Cathedral Rock, one of the hikes Rachel had mentioned. Saffy had never understood the appeal of hiking, but this was one of the most popular mountains in the Adirondacks, famous for the sweeping views from the fire tower at the top. Saffy grabbed her purse, packed with a plastic water bottle and the protein bars she kept tucked away for long nights at the station. She wore jeans and a pair of work flats, already layered with dust as she trudged toward the opening in the trees.

She walked. Saffy wound her way up the trail as the sun climbed parallel, a soft hand caressing her gently awake. She walked for minutes or hours she did not count—she had turned off her phone to save the battery—pushing until her thighs burned, until a pool of sweat had soaked her pants along her lower back. She walked until she reached the tree line, then along a ridge, where she could see the mountains spanning out below, offered up vulnerable.

The fire tower was perched on the summit, delicate and creaky. Beneath, the Adirondacks were indifferent, rolling hills painted a vivid summer green. When Saffy reached the landing, she peered out from the railing, letting the wind tangle her hair, chilling the sweat that dripped down her spine.

There was something about that girl. Blue. A feeling that dogged Saffy, relentless. It was envy, she realized, as the wind rippled the trees, miniature in the distance. It took a certain privilege to invite a man like Ansel into your world. To trust so freely. In the entirety of her life, Saffy had never once felt that sort of safety. As the world splayed beneath her, obscene in its beauty, Saffy marveled. She had known from a young age that everyone had darkness inside—some just controlled it better than others. Very few people believed that they were bad, and this was the scariest part. Human nature could be so hideous, but it persisted in this ugliness by insisting it was good.

By the time Saffy hiked back to the trailhead, the sun was high and sizzling. Her stomach grumbled and her shoulders had burned red—when she turned on her phone, she had eleven voicemails from Corinne.

Captain, call me.

It’s Lawson.

He’s dead.

*

Suicide, Corinne explained, as Saffy sped through town. The warden found him hanging from a bedsheet in his jail cell.

As Saffy wound through Tupper Lake, she let the anger flood. It was fury, yes—but it was more. She wasn’t even surprised. Men like Lawson always found a way out. She’d seen it so many times—how they squirmed through the cracks in a system that favored them. How, even after they’d committed the most violent crimes, they felt entitled to their freedom, however that might look. Stopped at a red light three blocks past the Blue House, Saffy pictured Marjorie, her hair matted with blood against the kitchen tile, the room swirling with smoke. She pictured Lawson himself, feet spinning above a jailhouse cot.

The cycle was ruthless. Inoperable. Saffy pulled a U-turn in the middle of the road, remembering what she had once told Kristen—she wanted to change the system from the inside. She was inside now, holding a microscope, watching the virus swallow everything whole.

*

When Saffy walked into the Blue House, she found the girl, standing alone behind the counter. Blue tapped at her phone as she sipped a glass of ice water, just back from a run, her face flushed, cheeks rimmed with salt. She startled at the sound of the door, then reached for a menu.

“How many?”

“Just me.”

Saffy took a stool at the bar, studying. Strawberry blond in a pair of running shoes. Blue’s hair was pulled back into a damp messy ponytail, flecks of mud spattering up her calves. In Blue’s profile, she could see flickering bits of Ansel—the rigid slant of her nose, something feline in the shape of her eyes.