There Is No Devil (Sinners Duet, #2)(38)

He looks up at me.

I press my palm against the glass, phone to my ear.

“Fucking hell,” Cole breathes. “You’re a goddess.”





We head back to Cole’s house, which is beginning to feel like my house. Not because I own it, but because I love it so much. I love the stark, forbidding face, the jumble of pointed dormers and dark gables. The ornate woodwork and the black stone.

Most of all, I love this perch high up on the cliffs, with the endless cycle of waves crashing below.

The wind blows off the bay, wild and cold. It’s the chilliest November on record. People keep making stupid jokes about how we could really use that global warming right now. Janice said it to me this morning.

As Cole opens the door for me, I think perhaps I like the smell of his house best of all.

He’s lived here alone for more than a decade. The scent is all his: leather and clay, the spice of his cologne, ocean salt, wet rock after rain. And running through it like a vein, my own scent as well. As perfect a pairing as any I’ve created with food. More delicious than banana and bacon, or avocado and jam.

The textures and colors of his house soothe me. Everything is muted and dark, but so lovely. Cole could never bear anything garish or loud.

The deep chocolate boards creak beneath my feet. The diaphanous curtains blow back from the open windows with a sound like a sigh, letting the sea breeze into the house.

Cole heads up to his room to change out of his clothes. He’s fastidious and doesn’t like to wear the same shoes and trousers that made contact with the outside world. He’ll come down in a minute, probably wearing some old-fashioned smoking jacket and a pair of velvet slippers.

I’ll have to change clothes as well, as I’m still covered in paint.

For the moment, my attention is caught by my laptop, still open on the table where Cole left it.

I don’t care that he was reading my emails. I would have been incensed if anyone had done it a few weeks ago, but we’re well past that now.

I walk over to the laptop, intending to close the screen.

Right as my fingers make contact, I hear the soft chime of another email arriving.

Usually, my mother’s emails are shunted over to a folder where I don’t have to see them. Because that folder is already open, I’m hit with her name and the heading: Your Mother’s Day Card.

I stare, confused, forced to parse that sentence.

I obviously do not receive Mother’s Day cards myself, and I certainly haven’t sent one to her.

My index finger moves without my consent, floating over to the trackpad and clicking once.

The email leaps up before my eyes.

For once, there’s no rambling diatribe.

Just an image, which appears to be an open card, scanned and copied.

I recognize the childish handwriting:

Happy Mothers Day Mommy



I love you so so so so so so so much. I made you cinnimin tost.

Im sorry I make so many misstaks. Your the best mom. Im not very good. I will try so hard. I will be beter.

I love you. I hope you never leeve. Please dont leeve even if Im bad. I wont be bad.

You are so pritty. I want to be pritty like you.

I love you Mommy. I love you.



Mara





Each word is a slap across my cheek. I can hear my own voice, my own thoughts, immature and desperate, crying in my ear:

I love you, Mommy, I love you.

I’m sorry.

Please don’t leave.

I won’t be bad.





Even my name signed at the bottom makes my stomach clench, the bile rising in my throat.

Little Mara. Desperate, pathetic, begging.

Every word of it is true—I wrote it. I felt it, at the time.

My deepest fear was that she would leave like my father did. She used to threaten me with it when I fucked up. When I forgot something or broke something of hers.

Later, it was me who wanted to leave. Who dreamed of doing it.

She’s throwing it in my face, the intense connection I had to her. The love to which I clung no matter what she said to me, no matter what she did. It took years longer for that love to wither and die. Even now, some perverse remnant endures, lodged deep in my guts.

I still think about her. I still yearn for what I wanted her to be.

I hate that about myself.

I hate my weakness.

I hate that she wields it against me as a weapon. Shaming me because I loved her. Guilting me because I want to stop.

Cole comes into the kitchen, dressed as I expected in a dark brocade jacket.

“What is it?” he demands, seeing the look on my face.

Without waiting for an answer, he grabs the laptop and turns the screen toward him.

He reads the email in a glance. The look that falls over his face would make a grown man stagger.

“When did she send this?” he barks.

“Just now.”

I’m shaking. I feel like she walked into the room and spat in my face.

She still has so much power over me.

I’ll never be free of her. She’ll never allow it.

Cole slams the windows shut and strips off his jacket, wrapping it around my shoulders.

“I’m covered in paint,” I tell him.

“I don’t give a fuck.”

I feel him shaking too, with anger.