The Almost Sisters(92)

“Agreed,” he said. “At some puh-point, her doctor’s testimony, maybe, will make them stop.”

So he was an optimist. Even if Birchie was unconvictable, if Tackrey dragged this on, the stress would kill her or exacerbate her illness to the point that she moved to Rabbit Land entirely. Also, there was Wattie to think about. She was of perfectly sound mind, and she didn’t have Birchie’s family name and influence. If Tackrey pushed it, Wattie could very well end up spending her last good years in prison. I wondered, not for the first time, if I should let her sons know how real the danger was. She wouldn’t thank me or forgive me, though, and Wattie was in her right mind. I had to let it be her call.

“Anyway. This isn’t a second-date conversation either,” I said. “I’m just so frustrated. At a certain point, when everything gets this wrecked, there can’t be a next, you know? It’s done. Game over. The end. There is no next.”

His gaze on me was frank and curious. He leaned on the car.

“I’m not saying anyone should prosecute your grandma. But speaking philosophically? There’s always a next.”

“Speaking philosophically, not if you die,” I said, so over-the-top dour that he laughed. I was happy to change the subject to something less tangible than human remains and the prosecutions of my dear old ladies.

“Even if you die,” he countered, interested. Maybe he’d forgotten to be nervous, because right now he wasn’t stuttering at all. “You don’t see it, but next happens anyway and always. With or without you.”

“No, I know, but—” I began, but then I stopped, because that phrase, “next happens anyway and always,” those words, in that order, clicked with some buried something in my own brain. “Do you really believe that?”

“Yeah. At least until the world ends,” he said, but maybe he was righter than he knew. Maybe there was a next even then, I thought, and then my brain did that irritating artist thing, where I stopped being in the road, or even in my body. All at once I was in Violet’s world, and Violence’s. A ruined place, with no next. When I came out again, I had a question.

“Nerd Test,” I said. “This is for the big money. Are you ready?”

He nodded, mock solemn, and I asked him Rachel’s question. “Violence and Violet, are they lovers?”

“Nah,” he said, sure and immediate. Like it was obvious. “Violet is Violence. She just doesn’t know it.” I’d been leaning that way, but when I heard him say it out loud, the artist in me knew that it was true. “In the warehouse scene? Violet has her hands over her eyes, and most of her little birds and animals hide, too, but the rabbits give it away. They watch Violence eat that drug lord, and you hid those little shadow rabbits in Violence’s hair. I missed it on my first read. You’re pretty slick. But once I saw them, it’s obvious. They’re reflections.”

He was right. I’d hidden all kinds of things in that book, Easter eggs and references and visual jokes, often in Violence’s hair and in the shadows around her. In that panel the watching rabbits were reflected, one to one. They were pieces of Violet, and they saw themselves when they looked at Violence. I’d drawn them that way, so I must have always known, way down in my subconscious, that they were one and the same, and both alive in me.

I had to call Dark Horse and get out of this contract. Change it. I couldn’t write the origin story they wanted, because there was no going backward. I’d left Violet and Violence in a world that was a wasteland of their—her—own making, but now I knew that a few things had survived. I’d drawn them already. Cats, in some form, and those spindle-limbed, toothy, slouchy Lewy bodies. Those personified Lewy bodies could be what remained of the human race, mutated into monsters. There might be little pockets of real human survivors, too, frail and vulnerable. There might be a few with other, interesting mutations. Supermutants. They would all be trying to survive with very limited resources. . . .

Images were unfolding in my head, the start of a story. I could see it. I could see the world, and V and V had to find a way to live in it. To live with it, with what they had done. There was a next, even after an apocalypse.

I don’t know how long I stood there, lost in my own mind, but when I came back into my body, he was waiting for me.

“You’re right. They’re the same,” I told him. “Flashing lights and bells and prizes. What would you like?”

“Yuh-you. Vuh-vvv-visiting Atlanta,” he said, shy again but saying it anyway. “Soon.”

“I will,” I said. “I promise.”

“I better guh-get on the road,” he said, but neither of us moved.

“Yeah, you should,” I said, and still we stood there.

“Mm-hm,” he said.

You hang up first. No, you.

“Go on,” I told him. I wanted to kiss him, but Lord, the eyes on us. Instead I told him, “There’s a next here, too,” and he smiled. I wasn’t an optimist, but even I knew this was true.

He got into his car, and I watched him drive off into the sunset. Literally. He headed west up Main Street, a dark silhouette against the spectacular sinking orange ball. But only literally, because I would go to Atlanta. Sooner rather than later. Sel Martin and I had together made a big mess and a baby, and there was a next coming for all three of us. The difference was, I wasn’t scared of this one. I’d always walked away from possibility, but I didn’t think that I would again, if it came down to it. Something had been put to rest when I confronted Jake, wringing that shoddy, shared apology out of him. Some new bravery had started, when the Fetus Formerly Known as Digby had quickened at my core. Together these things felt like a sea change. There would be a next, and in a place where half my relatives and a third of a small town weren’t peering out windows at us.