VenCo(44)

The bathtub was a bit small, but it had claw feet and was deep enough to drown in. She let the water run, clearing the pipes out before pushing the stopper into the drain, thinking about what that would feel like, drowning in a ceramic tub on the edge of a small town on a Thursday night. She figured she’d felt worse things this past year.

She flicked on the lights over the sink, then flicked them back off. “Let’s do this right,” she whispered, dragging a short wooden stool from in front of the pedestal sink, then standing on it to light the candles.

Over the window in front of the tub, a length of blue ribbon hung from the curtain rod. In the corner by the door was a massive spider web with the dusty remains of a trapped yellow butterfly. And the mirror looked as if someone had painted a full portrait on its surface before trying to wipe it clean. She’d asked the landlord to leave the old furniture. He was more than happy to oblige, not wanting to have to pay to clear the place out. As a result, there were beautiful couches and chairs from the twenties, but also dusty credenzas from the fifties and a massive block tube TV from the eighties.

Earlier that day, she’d found old sheets eaten to lace by moths in a wardrobe and hung them outside on the line, loving the way the sun poked through onto her skin, making patterns like so many leaves. She found rosemary tied up in bunches and hanging on a thin strip of rope across the back wall of the pantry, too old to be of use but still beautiful. Sweeping the living room, she found a packet of letters from a man named Bilford tucked under the radiator. Bilford loved Augustine, who had lived in this house with Ernest, who wasn’t a cruel man but an uninterested one. At one point, Lettie would have said indifference was worse than cruelty, because cruelty is at least full of passion. Now she knew different.

Sweet Augustine, she of the warmest month, the hottest night, I would give anything to catch you for just a moment, be free to run straight to you . . .



There were pages of love and abandon and, in the end, disappointment. After she’d finished reading them, Lettie wondered what Smith was doing right now, if he was crying in his car the way Bilford had watching Augustine walk with Ernest in town. If he was in his shirtsleeves, drinking brandy straight out of the bottle and writing poetry to his missing wife. The fleeting thought of him made her muscles tense and her back curl in protectively. He was no poet. She organized the letters, folded them into their envelopes, and put them back behind the radiator.

It was like moving into a museum. And with the future uncertain and the present precarious, Lettie found the past comforting. It was at least something to lean on while she caught her breath.

“And it’s all ours,” she said to the boy, who had pulled himself even smaller in the basket in his sleep. That right there, that was why she left—because her boy was making a habit of trying to be small, as small as he could be, invisible, especially when his daddy was around.

She stripped off her tracksuit and rubbed the stretch marks along her hips. She liked the way they were indented, like wheel marks in fresh earth, softer than any other part of her. She could fit a finger into each one, but only her own fingers, no one else’s. They were the exact width. Running her fingertips across them like strings, she felt as if she were at the beginning of a song. That made her laugh. “I sing the song of myself,” she quoted to no one.

Pulling the basket close to the tub so she could reach him if he woke up, she slid into the water like a dish into a sink: quiet, fully. The rolled edge of the tub was the perfect height to rest the back of her head on, and that was what she did. “Oh god, that’s good.”

The wind howled around the house, whistled through the cracks, and settled in the blocked chimney like a gasp. Lettie closed her eyes. She was here. She was alone. She was okay.

And then, suddenly, she was not. A loud crash sounded from down the hall. She sat up so fast water splashed over the side of the tub. She looked to the boy first, who grunted softly and rubbed at his face with one fist but remained asleep.

She was about to call out, then thought better of it. Instead, she rose in silence, wrapped herself in a towel and grabbed the lighter she’d used on the candles and a can of hairspray from the small box containing her toiletries. She wasn’t fucking around. Not in her house.

“Not in my house,” she whispered. Then she crept down the hall, her homemade blowtorch at the ready.

The hallway seemed twice as long now, and too full of shadows. She kept her eyes trained on the open door at the end that led to the dark bedroom. Her mouth had gone dry, and her mind was spinning around one figure—Smith.

How had he found her? Would he hurt her? Take the baby? Kill them?

She flicked the lighter to make sure it was working, and the flame jumped. Then she pressed the hairspray nozzle, and a hiss of liquid came out, wet with droplets at first and then changing to a fine mist. When it hit the flame, a whoosh erupted, lighting up the hall and throwing her shadow onto the striped wall. She watched it waver and then disappear as the flame went out.

“Come on, then, cocksucker,” she whispered, shit-talking to make herself feel brave.

The floor was creaky, and she winced with every wooden moan, keeping her eyes fixed ahead. When she got to the door, she stopped to take a big breath and then reached around the frame, goose bumps up her arms. Her fingers found the light switch, and she flipped it as she jumped into the room.

“Get out!” she screamed, louder than she’d imagined she could. She’d spent so long being quiet, the volume startled even her. Down the hall Everett woke and started crying.