The End of the Sentence by Maria Dahvana Headley, Kat Howard Page B

us. 
    She slit the envelope with her long fingernail, and unfolded the contents. I found I wasn’t breathing. 
    “Yes,” she said, nodding. “Like Ralph thought. They just want to know what you want them to do with his hide. Says this is the final notice.”
    I looked up. “His hide?”
    “His body,” she said. “Hide? What did you think I said?” 
    “Nothing.”
    “Okay,” she said, and smiled. “It’s weird out here, right? It’s too far out for most people. Gets too dark at night and too bright in the day. I’m working at the library today. Short hours on Sunday, but come by anytime if there’s something I can help you with. It can be hard, moving into a strange place, with all sorts of obligations that you weren’t expecting.”
    I walked her back to the front door. “Thanks for stopping by. And the food. It was kind of you.” I realized I had a question. “Olivia Weyland. Did you know her?”
    “Of course,” she replied. “She used to come into the library all the time. She knew a lot about the history of this area, got a correspondence degree from somewhere back East. It was sad what happened to her.”
    I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But no. That was a coward’s way. That was the old Malcolm.
    “What happened exactly? I thought—I figured she just died of old age or something.” I had looked her up, at the library. What had I missed?
    She looked steadily at me and my skin felt somehow both stroked and scraped. Her voice, maybe. The sweet roughness in it. Again, I wondered how old she was. In her thirties, I thought now, not twenties. My age, even. There were fine lines at the corner of her mouth, lines that suited her. Her fingernails were polished an iridescent pearl color. I wondered where she’d gotten the nail polish. 
    “Well, this is two years ago now, so that’s maybe why no one told you,” Lischen said. “It’s pretty bad, too. Nobody wants to talk about it. The people next door. Thought they’d rob her, but something went wrong. I went to high school with a boy from that family. They were trouble since forever. Famous in these parts for it. The Millers were some of the people that settled Ione, and they’d been going down a long time.” She shrugged. “They cut her hand off for her rings, the police said. I guess they couldn’t get them off. She had arthritis.”
    “Her hand,” I said. “I thought—”
    “What’d you think? Yeah,” Lischen said. “Her left hand. But then they all died too. There was an explosion and a fire over there. Well, you can see what happened. Scorched earth. The Millers are all gone now, and the Weylands too. My family’s the only one from back then still here and prospering.”
    She laughed, and it rang out weirdly in the kitchen. We were talking about murder, about drugs, about an old woman’s hand being cut off. I tried to reshuffle my mind, the things I thought I knew. 
    She patted the table. 
    “Don’t worry. I wasn’t laughing about Olivia Weyland and the Millers. I was laughing about prospering. Library full of old paper, and a diner full of pie, those are my family heirlooms. Come in and get dinner if you want to, later. Blackberry pie tonight. They’re ripe to bursting. See these stains on my mouth? You’ve got some out back. Bring them by and I’ll make you some jam. Got to put something on those popovers.”
    She grinned at me, and the grin was ridiculous, dizzy-making. She was right. Her lips were stained. I had to remind myself who I was, a man who’d fled his life, and for good reasons. I couldn’t have anything like what that grin looked like. Happiness wasn’t simple for me. I thought of my marriage. It was taking me too long to let her go, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t over. Once you run away, you can’t go back.
    “Maybe I’ll see you later,” I managed. 
    “Hope so,” she said, and put her hand on my shoulder for a moment. I jerked back. It’d been a long time since anyone had touched me,