Page 2 of Spade

The therapist made a noise, halfway between a sigh and a hum. “Not the way I’m asking?”

“She’s not dead. She got out.” My mouth was dry, and I could feel my pulse in my teeth. “She moved away after high school. Changed her name. Last I heard, she was living up in Oregon.”

“Do you talk?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I thought about the last phone call. The sound of her voice was so bright, so careful not to let any of our history into it. “She wants to be someone else. She doesn’t want this following her.”

“Does it follow you?” the therapist asked.

I looked at her then, really looked. Her eyes were plain brown, no flecks, but there were shadows underneath, like she’d seen a lot of sleepless nights. “Not unless I let it.”

She wrote something on her pad, then set the pen down with a deliberate little click. “It’s okay to be angry about it.”

I barked a laugh, short and not kind. “I’m not angry. That would mean I still cared.”

Her eyebrows came together for the briefest second, like she’d spotted a lie but wasn’t sure how to call it out.

She tried a different angle. “You said earlier that you ‘plan’ when you hear his boots. Is that a habit you still have?”

I blinked. The air felt thicker. “I always have a plan. That’s not trauma. That’s common sense.”

Her voice was gentle, but she pressed: “How does that play out in your current life?”

I shrugged, even though it was the wrong move for the chair. “I make sure no one can get the drop on me. I walk with my keys between my fingers. I memorize the exits. If I don’t like the feeling in a place, I leave.”

She nodded, slow. “You’re the Sergeant at Arms for the Royal Harlots, correct?”

I didn’t answer. She already knew the answer.

“Does the club give you what your family didn’t?”

I thought about the clubhouse, the red-lit bar, the roar of the bikes in the lot, the way the women looked at each other—sometimes like enemies, more often like packmates. “The club is family.” The words felt like code, and I meant them that way.

“Do you trust them?”

That was a trick question. I weighed it, then said, “I trust them to be who they are.”

She left that alone. “Do you feel safe with them?”

I considered the last week: someone slashing the tires of the club van, the new girl catching a fist to the mouth for mouthing off, a member’s daughter getting hauled in by the cops again. “Safe’s not the word I’d use.”

“What word would you use?”

I thought for a long moment, then said, “Predictable.”

That was the thing about MC life, the thing no one on the outside ever got. It wasn’t about chaos or freedom or whatever the documentaries thought; it was about knowing what to expect and who to expect it from. That was the real comfort.

The therapist let the lavender haze settle. Then she said, “Earlier, you said your sister wanted to escape your family’s shadow. Do you?”

I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it. I stared at the dish. At the box of tissues I’d never touched, though the therapist sometimes nudged it closer to my side of the table. I could feel something thick and mean behind my ribs, pressing up.

I flexed my hands, opening and closing them. “I don’t think about it.”

“You don’t think about escape?”