eleven
Angelina
The pasta water boils over with a hiss that makes me lunge for the burner, twisting it down with fingers that have been shaking on and off since this morning.
I've gotten skilled at hiding it, by gripping things, pressing my palms flat against surfaces, or folding my hands in my lap during hearings as if composure were something I could hold in place by force of posture alone.
"Mom, what's 847 divided by 7?"
Chesca's worksheets fan across the counter in a disaster of eraser smudges and crooked columns. Her ponytail lists to the left again. I reach over and fix the elastic while stirring with my other hand, and the smell of butter and garlic rises from the pan the way it used to rise from Nonna Rosa's kitchen on Sunday afternoons.
Instead of giving her the answer, I ask, "What's 7 times 100?"
"700." Her pencil is between her teeth, tongue poking out. "So that leaves 147. Then 7 times 20 is 140, and... 121?"
"Good girl. Write it down."
The routine should be soothing, homework and dinner and the ordinary rhythm of a Tuesday evening. But I'm watching Chesca's head bent over her math while my mind replays evidence markers on my desk, yellow placards with numbers on them, my workspace transformed into a crime scene while I stood with my arms crossed and couldn't make them uncross.
Stop. She's right there. Focus on her.
I drain the orecchiette. Steam hits my face and the heat is wrong, too close, too sudden, and for one bad second the steam is the flash of Damian's camera in my chambers this morning—
Stop it. Get it together, Angelina.
I shake the colander harder than necessary. Water hisses against stainless steel sink. Ordinary sounds. Safe sounds.
Patricia Brown drank whiskey neat at conference receptions. She told me I was good at this job and I laughed, a real laugh, not a performance, and now she's the sixth victim. Twenty-three pages of autopsy reports, and that's the conclusion.
Her voice in my head, dry and warm.You're doing fine, honey. Better than fine.
She's in a medical examiner's office and I'm making orecchiette and I cannot think about that right now because my daughter is four feet away asking about long division.
My eyes burn. I blink hard, twice, and dish up the pasta.
"121 is right, tesoro."
"Why is everyone being weird tonight?"
Those eyes. Adrian's eyes in my daughter's face, dark and sharp and missing nothing. I hate that I see him in her sometimes. I hate more that I can't stop looking for him.
"Busy day at work." I set the bowl on the table and my voice sounds almost normal, which is its own kind of verdict on how much practice I've had at this. "Nothing to worry about."
"You always say that." She narrows her eyes at me.
"Because it's always true."
She doesn't buy it. She studies the rigid line of Cole's shoulders where he stands by the window, then looks back at me with an expression that says she's observing details she doesn't have words for yet. But she's eight, and she knows when I won't budge, so she turns back to her worksheet with a small sigh that sounds far too old for her age.
The quiet holds. Barely.
Cole hasn't moved from his position by the living room window in twenty minutes. I can see the new deadbolts from where I'm standing. And the new window sensors, tiny and white and meant to blend in. My home transformed into a perimeter while I was at work.
I used to think I was vigilant. I used to think my habit of counting exits and tracking men's hands in rooms constituted awareness.
I didn't know what awareness looked like until I watched Cole turn my house into a fortress without asking permission.
My phone buzzes on the counter. Uncle Sal's name on the screen.