Chapter 79

79

I stopped sleeping for weeks after that. When I did, I dreamed of Sam. His fingers were sliced one by one as he wriggled in my arms, screaming. I don’t know who was doing the cutting. Violet, I suppose. And then I could feel the ends of his fingers rolling around my tongue as I sucked and chewed them. Like a mouthful of jelly beans. I spit in the sink when I woke up, expecting I would see blood. That’s how real it felt to me.

Violet came over the following month. We were quieter this time, less pleasant to each other. The coldness was back. She knew Gemma had called me. I knew she’d taken the blade, but I didn’t know if I should confront her about it. I didn’t know what to do. I was exhausted from not sleeping and it was easier not to think about it.

I decided to let it go, until one day she asked me a question. I was bleaching the bathroom mat in the laundry tub downstairs. She pointed to the poison symbol on the bottle of bleach and opened her mouth for a moment before she let the words out: “That means someone could die if they drank even a bit of it, right?” She paused again. “Why do you have something so dangerous down here?”

“Why are you asking?”

She shrugged. She wasn’t looking for an answer—she left the laundry room and I heard her phone you to pick her up early. The anxiety crawled up my spine, that familiar, crippling panic that nearly closed my throat. I had been there before. I had barely survived it.

I put the bottle back in the cupboard where I kept the other cleaning supplies. I scanned the shelf. I made a mental note of what was there.

I called Gemma again and again that afternoon as my chest pounded. She answered in the evening.

I told her what Violet had said about the poison. I told her about the blade missing from my drawer.

I told her I was only looking out for her and her family. That I was worried about Jet. That we had to think about Violet differently. That I was afraid something was going to happen again—that I had an instinct. I put my head on the table while I waited for her to speak. I was so tired of thinking about Violet. I didn’t want her to be my problem anymore. My fear.

Gemma was quiet. And then she spoke calmly:

“She didn’t push Sam, Blythe. I know you believe she did. But you’ve made it up. You saw something happen that never did. She didn’t do it.”

She hung up the phone. I heard the keys in the door—he was coming to stay the night. I called him into the kitchen and I took my clothes off. We fucked on the table while he lifted up my limp, hanging breasts that had been sucked to their death, like he was imagining where they once had been.