Page 57 of Antihero

“Then you are not the one who will decide. Promise me.”

He couldn’t make the words come out. Her gaze was unremitting. She was an extraordinarily patient woman.

“I won’t kill them,” Evan said. “But I will hurt them.”

“You want them to what? Suffer?”

He considered. “I wouldn’t mind it.”

“And you want to be the perpetrator of that suffering?”

“I’m willing to.”

“Willing? Or wanting?”

“I want to ensure they cannot do this again. That means they must suffer. I don’t mind that they suffer at my hands. I want them to know why. I want them to see the evil inside them for what it is and know that they are being punished for it.”

She’d received the words but he had no read on how she might respond.

“They are suffering,” she said finally. “They are being punished. And there is much more to come.”

“Why are you concerned for them?”

“I’m not concerned for them,” she said. “I’m concerned for you.”

She made no sense. No sense at all. But that was okay. He’d just told her that nothing had to make sense right now. He would honor his pledge to her. He would not kill them.

But he would make them answer.

She sipped her tea, closed her eyes, head nodding as she dozed off. Evan reached across the table and gently took the mug from her hands so it wouldn’t spill and burn her.

“Maybe you’d like to lie down?”

“Yes. Yes.” She stood. “You will be outside? Where I can see you?”

“Yes.”

She trudged behind him to the front door.

He paused at the threshold. “Until we get the locks changed, you can slide a chair beneath the doorknob.”

“I thought you’d be watching.”

“I will be. It’s not necessary. Just if it makes you feel better.”

“It would.”

He stepped outside, eased the door shut. He’d gotten a few steps down the hall when the door opened behind him.

“Evan.”

He turned.

She looked small there in the narrow slice of open doorway. “What would happen if you lived your life as if all your choices were sacred?”

He said, “What makes you think I don’t?”

Her brow furrowed; she was pondering. “Maybe we have different definitions of what constitutes sacred.”