Page 65 of The Final Cut

CHAPTER ELEVEN

DELIA

Isabel’s house is quiet after violence. That’s how I know she’s angry.

The staff move softly through the halls, eyes lowered, shoes making almost no sound against polished marble. Doors close without latches clicking fully, and fresh flowers replace older ones before the petals have a chance to brown. The house resets itself around the sins of the other night, smooth and perfect, as if blood is simply another inconvenience to be handled by competent hands.

I have lived in this silence for fifteen years. Tonight, it feels different.

Reva is alive somewhere beyond these walls, and Cal Boudreaux is in a hospital bed because I didn’t move fast enough.

Because I hesitated.

Because I spent half my life learning how and when to obey, and I still chose the wrong second to stop.

Little sister.

By a few minutes, but still. Reva will always be my little sister. I used to lord it over her when we were small, smug as a queen because I shot out of the birth canal first. I was older. I was the elder. The chosen one.

That joke curdles when I think of it now.

Chosen.

What a pretty word for being placed on the right side of the knife.

I adjust the bracelet over the bruises on my wrist and leave my room when the clock in the hall strikes eight.

Dinner is never skipped. Grief can wait. Fear can wait. Broken things can wait.

Isabel does not wait.

Once upon a time, I called her Nana.

Reva did too, though I doubt she remembers. That memory is gone somewhere, sunk beneath bayou and blood and whatever mercy the mind gives a child who has seen too much.

I was ten when Isabel told me to stop.

I remember it clearly. The morning light in the breakfast room. The smell of chicory coffee. The sugar crusted on my fingers from a pastry I had no appetite for. I called her Nana, soft and automatic, and her mouth tightened as if the word had left a stain on the tablecloth.

“I am not a nana,” she said, with a peevish wave of one jeweled hand. “Nanas rock babies and knit blankets. I am la jefa.”

The boss.

I called her Isabel after that. Or ma’am.

The corridor outside her office is dimmer than the rest of the house, lit by sconces shaped like lilies, their gold arms climbing the walls. Her door is open a few inches.

I slow before I can stop myself, listening. Her voice slips through the crack.

“I understand Boudreaux remains alive.”

A man answers, too quiet for me to recognize. “For now.”

“That family has a tiresome talent for surviving.”

My hand tightens around the edge of my bracelet.

Reva’s face flashes behind my eyes. Wet hair from the pool. Fury. Hurt. The slap I earned. The way she looked at me on the terrace when she realized I was trying to get her away from the chapel.