Cold Springs by Rick Riordan

for Race, too. Y'all both got a share. He can stay at the house a few more days. After that, I figure Nana take him.”
    Then Samuel understood—the whole thing clicked into place. “What's your end of the deal?”
    “Just disappear.”
    “Just disappear,” he repeated. “With Race.”
    She stared at the rug.
    Samuel's throat felt dry. “Well, then. You'd better do it.”
    She started to push past him, leaving the money behind, but he said, “You forgetting something?”
    She turned, glanced down at the cash. She looked nervous and hungry, like an animal, waiting for permission to grab some food.
    “You got to disappear,” Samuel said.
    “Yeah. Vincent waiting for me—”
    “That's his name. Vincent.”
    “He's a good man.”
    “Oh, yeah. All of them, good men. So checking, savings, real estate. You got it all into cash, huh?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Liquidated,” Samuel said. “Everything about you gone—squeezed into dollar signs. Like you never existed—not to me, not to your boys, not to nobody. That the way you want it?”
    Talia's eyes were Christmas-ornament fragile, the way they always looked when a man started to turn angry on her, got ready to knot his hands into fists. Samuel had seen that look too many times, and it made the bones in his fingers turn to acid.
    “I'll leave you the cash,” Talia said. “Let me take Race.”
    “Oh, now you're taking Race.”
    “He's my son. Just take the money. I owe you.”
    “You owe me what?”
    She wouldn't say.
    “You owe me what?”
    “Please.”
    “Look at me. Say my name.”
    “I got to—it's eight o'clock—Vincent, he—”
    “Look at me, girl.”
    The knife was in his hand now, melting into his palm, becoming an extension of his fingers.
    “Samuel,” she murmured.
    “You're not gone yet,” Samuel said. “Not totally. You need to disappear, girl.”
    Talia stepped back, sensing that moment on the edge of the railing, when you are still sure you can recover, before you tumble and realize the void is void. That you don't get second chances.
    Samuel's knife slashed up, splitting leopard-pattern cloth like the leather satchel, spilling everything like the cash, everything she'd kept inside all those years—her softness, her warmth. He and Talia sank to the floor together like lovers, her fingers hooked into the flesh of his shoulders, her magnolia perfume and her sap-crust hair and the little sounds she was making, whimpering as he made heavy, desperate thrusts—so much like making love—a warm wet spray on his face, dampening his shirt, sticking his sleeves to his arms.
    He stopped only when the handle of the knife slipped from his grip, the blade biting his index finger, tangling in a fold of what used to be Talia's sweater. Samuel stayed on his knees, straddling her, his breath shuddering. He sucked at the salty cut on his finger joint. He was wet all over, but it was already starting to dry, starting to cool.
    After a long time, he stood, flexed his fingers to keep them from sticking together. He stared at a twenty-dollar bill, floating in a wet red halo. Talia's shoe, twisted at an unnatural angle.
    He walked to the bathroom, turned on the shower. He stripped and stood under the warm water, naked, until the needles of heat stopped causing any sensation in his back. He watched swirls of pink curly clouds in the water, tracing the outlines of his toes.
    Samuel forgot where he was. He forgot who he was. He felt like someone had gone carefully under his skin with a hot filament, separating the skin from the muscle, so that his face floated on top of someone else's—some other person he didn't like, someone who hadn't turned his life around, who carried a knife and spent every dark hour of the evening, for the past nine years, studying a reflection in the blade, seeing Talia's eyes, Talia's mouth, Talia's cheekbones.
    He stepped out of the shower, the house too quiet without the noise of water.
    What would he do if Race walked in with his girl