The Guilty One by Sophie Littlefield Read Free Book Online Page B

they’re really good. Really impressive. Do you, I mean is your work—”
    â€œI’m a bartender.” A quick, ironic glance. “Total cliché, right? Except I’m not, like, really trying to make it as an artist or anything. I’m not good enough, and, I mean, don’t feel like you have to say I am. But, yeah, for now I bartend at night and I’m getting my associate’s degree over at Merritt. Maybe I’ll try to get into Cal after. Or something.”
    She shrugged toward the corner of the room, and Maris saw what she had missed at first—a desk made out of a plywood top set on sawhorses. It was the least cluttered part of the room. Hanging on the wall above it were metal shelves holding clear plastic bins full of crayons, pencils, markers. Large sheets of blank paper were clipped by clothespins on wires suspended from the ceiling.
    â€œSo anyway I could like make . . . well, I was going to say tea, but I don’t think I have any. Diet Coke? And you can totally take the chair or you can sit on the bed, whatever.”
    Pet picked up a stack of books from a TV tray table standing next to a worn red upholstered wing chair. She moved them to the floor along the wall. The TV tray was decorated with a hunting scene: a buck standing on a hill above a lake, antlers wider than its shoulders.
    â€œI really can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Pet.” Maris felt her voice catch in her throat. The girl was too trusting, by far.
    â€œIt’s no big deal.”
    â€œMaybe I could . . . could I take you to lunch?”
    â€œIf you feel like it, I guess. But don’t worry about it. Look, I’m going to put my headphones on, but just yell if you need something, okay? The internet’s SloLow. S-L-O-L-O-W. Password is blue taco 1. All one word, capital B.” She shrugged. “Don’t ask me why, my landlord picked it.”
    She put her headphones on and her hand hovered over a bin full of crayons only for a second before she picked out a bright red stub and made a bold stroke on the paper.
    Maris thought she could lose herself in watching the drawing take shape. She was suddenly exhausted. It might be nice to sit here in the enveloping chair that smelled like dusty sachets and watch this odd girl draw. But she had things to do. Which was, on reflection, a sort of novel feeling. For months, for the entire past year, she had felt that her life was sweeping her out to sea, that she was powerless against the tide of it, her only task to keep her head above water as she was carried along. At some point, there had been a fork in the river—on one side, the gentle, benevolent stream she had expected her life to take: Calla off to San Diego in the fall, leaving Maris more time to concentrate on her night classes, maybe take a trip with Jeff for their anniversary. Their twenty-second—not a milestone, but still an accomplishment. Instead, she had been swept to the other fork, to waters more turbulent than she ever could have expected: raging rapids, treacherous rocks and falls. Was the change in course all due to a caprice of fate? Inattention? Some crime Maris had never been aware she’d committed, or an accumulation of small sins?
    She’d certainly had time to wonder. (Nina had acknowledged that self-blame was common, but cautioned against it. One of the many times Maris thought balefully that she ought to take the $125 an hour and just burn it, as Nina’s counsel often seemed almost insultingly obvious. Still, she had been highly recommended.) You get your detective assigned to you, you hire your lawyers, your coworkers and friends organize themselves into platoons of support. Food arrives. Your lawn is mowed. It begins to seem like the purpose of all that expended energy is to keep you in a childlike state, with no responsibilities and no agenda, nothing but the waiting and the thinking and the endless replaying.