Was he so cold that he felt nothing when either targeting his victims or, inevitably, cleaning up afterward? Or was the difference that this was the only time he felt anything at all? It was the nervous energy, combined with the corresponding adrenaline rush, that urged him on. Oh, and of course, his need to inflict misery. A miswired sexual circuit board that made him feed off pain instead of pleasure. Until doing the worst felt the best to him.

I often thought if my father were still alive, he would be the first to tell you it wasn’t his fault. He’d been born that way. It was simply his nature. Which he’d graciously handed down to his older daughter, Shana, while apparently saving some pieces for me.

Except I didn’t want to be Harry Day’s daughter. I didn’t want to be Shana Day’s sister.

And I wondered about my mother again. A mere shadow of a woman, who didn’t even exist on paper, and yet had been the one to take our father’s life.

Dad is love. Mom is worse.

As D. D. Warren and I had discussed, in any relationship there could be only one alpha. In my family, clearly my father had called all the shots. Meaning if my mother had fed him aspirin before slitting his wrists, it was only because he’d told her to. He’d commanded, and she’d obeyed.

Which Shana held against my mother, because she had sensed the submissive in her, the weak female, which Shana despised. Shana identified with our father, the alpha hunter, living on his own terms. I often wondered if she envied his decision to die rather than be captured.

If Shana and I had still been in the same home, like true sisters, when the police had come for her thirty years ago, would she have climbed into the tub, then silently handed me the razor?

And me?

Maybe I would’ve accepted the razor. Then leaned forward and delicately removed a single strip of skin before running away.

My sister was wrong. I was not our mother, any more than I was our father. Somehow, I was both. A submissive predator who both harmed and felt remorse. A terrible person some nights, while holding strong even more nights.

We can all be both good and bad. Heroic and evil. Strong and weak.

I shivered again, seeing things in my mind I didn’t want to see, and unable to shake the relentless feeling of dread. My sister had spoken. She’d given us a number tying our long-dead father to a new and improved killer.

My sister, all these years later, still determined to make me bleed.

From Target, I went to the grocery store. Another stop in the restroom. The last of the human skin flushed down the toilet. On the first try, this time. Apparently, the grocery store had better water pressure.