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My hts wouldn’t stick I choked down the scotch and barely tasted the overcooked roast After dinner, I trudged up toI wasn’t sad or hurt, just…frustrated I’d spentI was supposed to be the same as my peers, that some quirk of fate had made me different It turned out that I was not supposed to be the same I was supposed to be different And that difference would’ve been celebrated by a certain s through My es froet anization that my mother feared? That ht replayed of its own accord The stranger de the name of the person who had killed his brother No, wait That rong Who had ordered his brother killed Those were two very different things

Organizations ordered people killed Mobsters and the like Was that what I was dealing with?

And did that ht side of the divide?

But what if there were no lines at all? Just a ullible Too easy to prey upon Just look--ered by my mother, and I hadn’t rebelled or pressed for the truth The woical volu rules she didn’t follow herself Living in the dark

I blew out a breath and pushed myself up off my bed What better ti the , planning to stew in ht of a person walking down our side of the deserted sidewalk

I dropped low, all otten

Peeping out of the corner of the , a place that would be nearly out of sight from down below, I studied the passerby Thea black coat with the collar turned up He had a bowler hat on his head and his hands in his pockets No uht was to say a shark stood out in a shallow pool This

I clutched theframe My breath came out fast and shallow

He turned and stared at the house, his toes only a foot fro moment passed Silence stretched like taffy

He tore his hands out of his pockets and threw the an invisible wall on the edge of our property The patterns and colors I’d coic flashed into view, the weave artful and delicate, though not nearly as tightly woven as the stranger’s

A boom sounded from somewhere within the house I juot business with ht In her hands, held like she’d been born with it, was a shotgun

"Holy crap-shack," I said, pushing forward until et a shotgun?"

"I have the right to shoot you Try ht clicked on across the street Lewis must’ve fallen asleep in his chair Soon he’d see the spectacle Then call the cops

At least this tiht You better run I knohat you’re about" Myman in the raincoat

I shrank back from theso she wouldn’t see th Though I clearly wasn’t the one who needed it Not that she’d let me tell her that

Minutes passed, the curtain across the street rustled, and my mother wandered back into the house

The street fell into an uneasy quiet

For now

Chapter Fifteen