I shook my head and went inside. It wasn't the first time I'd thought of killing a man. I'd thought about it a lot the times my dad was home from war, whiskey-clumsy, talking down my mom and me. It didn't seem likely that I'd pull it off, though, especially not with Smith. Then again, Smith had stolen my water, come for my chickens. This shit now was just the after-that of both those things, an ending that was starting to feel heavy, inevitable. My dad told me once that no matter how much he believed in spreading democracy and just wars and retribution for terrorists, it still took everything he had to look at another human through the sight of his gun, a body with a beating heart, with people who loved and were loved by them, a life in progress, and pull the trigger.

“In the end, Gracie,” he'd said, “you do it because you're scared shitless that they'll shoot you first.”

Fran's kitchen smelled mostly like applesauce but also metallic, like Smith's blood. Smith's head was shaved, his clothes were rumpled, and a thin line of drool ran out of the corner of his mouth. On his blazer, stuck to the lapel, was a piece of chicken down. I didn't know if it came from Hitchcock or Montana, but the wispy tendrils were shivering as Smith's chest rose and fell. Next to him, on the floor, lay a wooden-handled kitchen cleaver.

I wanted to feed him. I wanted to bite him. I wanted to smash my boot in his nose.

I couldn't stop thinking of the day they came to take the water, years ago, when Smith just stood there, head shaved, gun drawn, pretending not to know me as the director of Extension locked my water away. I closed my eyes, trying to picture Smith the way I had loved him best, back when we were both just high school kids and everything was still real simple. At our senior prom, his rented tux fit him perfectly. He wore his hair long and his curls caught my fingers as I straddled him in the backseat of his mother's car. I can still picture the way the full moon gave a sheen to the vinyl upholstery, the oily flavor of Smith's Altoids coating my own tongue.

Back in Fran's kitchen, I needed my rage, but somehow I couldn't muster it. I closed all the windows. It helped to feel confined, penned in, to want for fresh air. I knelt next to Smith, the linoleum cool on my shins. I wrapped my left fingers around the knife handle, ran my right knuckles along the side of his cheek. He smiled a little in his sleep. I leaned in close, ran my tongue along the curved edge of his ear.

“What,” I whispered, my lips moving against the soft fuzz on his skin, “did you mean with that rose?”