Page 32 of Ruthless Sin
I do not open the book.
The floor creaks when I sit.
I do not read tonight.
I just sit.
The cicadas are going and the heat presses in through the open window at the end of the hall, carrying the faint river smell that comes up from the south after midnight, muddy and wide and older than the house.
I wait.
Her palm does not come to meet mine. The wood under my palm is just wood.
I stay still. My breath stays even.
Then it comes.
Behind the door, so quiet I would not catch it if I did not know what kind of silence to listen for.
A hum.
Barely. Under her breath, under the house itself, under everything. I catch two notes and lose them. Catch the edge of a third. The shape slips every time I reach for it.
My other hand goes flat against the wall beside me before I have asked it to.
My ribs answer it without asking permission. I want to press my ear to the wood and stay there all night. I press my palm harder against the wall instead. I hold still. I do not let her know I have heard her.
Then it stops.
The wood is silent again.
I close my eyes.
My hand is still flat against the wall. The plaster is warm under my palm. I press harder. The wood frame underneath.
Plaster, plaster, plaster.
Not concrete.
I open my eyes.
I stand. My back aches from the floor and my knees take a beat to straighten, which I let happen without hurrying because there is no one in this hallway to see it.
I do not let my breath change until I am two doors down.
I lie on top of the covers with the window open and whatever I caught through that door turning over in my chest without resolving into anything I can name.
The moths are at the porch light below my window. The magnolia at the edge of the property has gone still. The house is at its deepest quiet and I am nowhere near sleep.
I do not let myself think about why.
The sound comes through the wall.
A breath, wrong shape, wrong throat. Then a second one, sharper, wetter. Then something that is not quite a word and not quite a cry, broken off in the middle.
I am on my feet and in the hallway before it finishes.
I stop outside her door.
