I heard her shift under the water, a thunk of a plastic bottle.

I cleared the closet and moved to the desk. I shuffled through papers and shook out the two books (hardcover, obviously) that she owned, dog-eared but hiding nothing.

There was another sound from the bathroom, and I paused before turning back to the desk and pulling on the handle of the middle drawer.

It was locked.

My paper had to be in there. Why else would she lock it? I couldn’t lock mine. I searched the back for a release switch. I got down on my knees and crawled under the desk, feeling blindly.

I was too focused—too damn close—to hear the water trickle to a stop.

“Looking for something?”

I shot up and slammed my head underneath the desk. By the time I shuffled out, backward and on all fours, the world was spinning.

“You can’t blame me for trying—” I started, rubbing my eyes. But then I saw her.

Cal stood in the doorway, a towel clasped together in one fist over her chest. It was a big, weighty towel, the kind that never gets dry and always smells a little like onion sweat and wet dreams. But even it wasn’t big enough to cover all of them.

The burns were everywhere. They started at her toes and climbed their way up her shins, her knees, and her thighs: a latticework of scar tissue abloom with blisters. More still spread across her collarbone and unfurled all the way down her arms to the swollen, broken tips of her fingers. The only part of her that wasn’t textured, sticky like honeycomb, was her face.

“Fuck,” I said, forgetting my spinning head and my smoking gun of a position. “Cal, what is that?”

“You mean the water doesn’t do this to you?” she asked sweetly, and when she grinned, the skin of her neck wept.

SILAS

SILAS HADN’T MEANT TO hear their conversation. He wasn’t one of those parents who spied. As he liked to say at family reunions with his Las Vegas cousins, who looked like their children sucked more color out of them with each passing year, he trusted his kids. So he did not go into the boathouse that afternoon to eavesdrop.

He went looking for bullets.

When Evan died, Rose insisted they get rid of all of his guns, except the 9mm carbine. She always liked that one. She said it made her feel dangerous in a good way, but it didn’t leave her shoulder sore.

Despite her aversion, Rose had always been a damn good shot.