In the First Early Days of My Death by Catherine Hunter Page A

finished, she pulled a cigarette out of her package and placed it between her lips. I was dying for a smoke. I waited for her to light a match, so that at least I could smell the burning tobacco, but she was taking her sweet time. She pulled a movie magazine out of her purse and flipped through the pages. She picked up the matches and tore one from the paper book.
    Then she changed her mind. She removed the cigarette from her mouth and laid it on the table. She stood up and stretched. She opened the freezer and took out a carton of vanilla ice cream. The cardboard was lightly frosted with little crystals misting the picture on the package, two pale, creamy scoops in a blue bowl. Memory shot through me like a toothache. Ice cream. Cigarettes. I used to keep our cigarettes in the freezer, and they always tasted best when they were cold.
    Evelyn dug a spoon deep into the carton and stood over the kitchen sink, licking at it delicately. Eat it , I wanted to say, s coff it up for heaven’s sakes , but she ate like a kitten. She didn’t appreciate anything she had. What could you expect from a murderer?
    She put the ice cream back in the freezer, drank a glass of water, and sat down to light the cigarette. I watched her inhale, imagining the circulation of the smoke through the lungs, the gathering of nicotine into the bloodstream. I thought I’d go crazy if I couldn’t get some nicotine into me. I thought about her crime and how she’d be punished for it. Alika would see, finally, what she was really like. Noni had been right. Evelyn was dangerous. She was one of those grasping, lethal little people who didn’t know when to let go. She was greedy. I might have felt sorry for her if it weren’t for everything she’d stolen from me. I had nothing, and Evelyn still had everything. I’d heard that she had no family, and I knew she’d lost Alika. But she still had flannel pyjamas and vanilla ice cream. She had a stove and a refrigerator and a huge poster on the wall of the Rocky Mountains, snow-capped peaks and a little stream running down the mountainside. An ad for beer. She probably had beer in the fridge, too. She was smoking a cigarette and reading a magazine, and I was exiled out here.
    I watched her get ready for bed. She brushed her hair slowly, at least a hundred strokes. It was revolting. I consoled myself with the thought that she would be arrested soon. I had a detective for a neighbour, and he liked me. I could tell. He didn’t suspect her yet, but he’d soon catch on. She was so obvious. She had a picture of Alika right beside her bed.

    â€œMark?” said Evelyn. She whirled around in her chair. But she knew it wasn’t her brother. Not tonight. Some other entity was prowling in the dusk outside her window. Something she couldn’t see. She jumped into bed and pulled up the covers. What was out there? A mere wisp of a thing, too insubstantial to be glimpsed, was watching her. Was it malevolent? Evelyn hoped she hadn’t summoned it herself, by mistake somehow. She remembered Sister Theresa’s warnings about the occult arts, about fooling around with the dark side. She kept her bedside lamp on all night long, and all night long, the weak, invisible presence hovered at the glass.
    Evelyn knew what it was like to be invisible. She’d been invisible herself, when she was a teenager. After Mark’s death, she’d come home from school every day as usual and said hello to her mother, but her mother’s eyes were always turned toward the window or the television, or she’d stare at the clock, astonished that her daughter was home already, that so much time had passed. Evelyn tried to engage her mother in conversation, but her mother always wandered away, muttering that she’d be right back. If she sought her out, she’d find her lying on Mark’s bed, in a deep sleep. Evelyn was old enough to take care of herself, so she did.
    It was