That was what she’d say.

“I’ll take care of it,” Jesse said again.

She looked up at him, vaguely aware that he was the child and she, the adult, and that this was all backwards.

“I’ll have to use your car.” He picked up her keys from the table where she kept her paints. Then he picked up a pair of those work gloves she’d bought for him that he never used. He studied them for a moment.

“I’m gonna wreck these.”

She nodded her consent and he put the gloves on.

Maybe there will be no police, she thought.

Jesse opened the warehouse door and she turned away as he dragged Martin’s body outside. Although it was very early morning and few people would be out, she was glad the warehouse was nearly surrounded by trees and at the end of a long road cut off from the rest of the world. Jesse came back inside. He picked up the hammer, walked over to her paint table. He opened a can of paint with the bloody claw of the hammer. Then he walked over to the bloodstained concrete. Anna watched in shock as he poured red paint over the blood. He dropped the can on top of the mess.

“Anyone ask, you accidentally dropped the paint,” he said, so calmly. “You gonna have to git more.”

From the front corner of the warehouse, he picked up the huge piece of cheesecloth that had lined the canvas when Anna bought it. “For your car,” he said. He walked to the door. “I’ll shut this after me.” He looked past her toward the wall of the warehouse, staring hard as if he could see through it to the dirt road. “I ain’t never rode one of them motorcycles,” he said, “but when I come back I’ll do my mighty best to git it gone.” He looked at her then, still sitting there cold and dumb as a rock, and told her, “You got to git rid of that book, Anna,” he said pointing to the journal in her hands. “That there diary. You done wrote too much in it.”

She clutched the journal to her chest. Nodded. But she knew she would never get rid of it, this last gift from her mother. Never.