Page 74 of Devil

Shaking her head, Zenny approaches the table with her hand extended. “I’m so sorry, Birdie,” she says. I accept the handshake and then Zenny drops heavily into the chair next to me, looking exhausted. “She’s got a better filter than Amani, but sometimes she can’t help herself.” Zenny shakes her head. “A sociopath.”

“It’s okay, really,” I assure her.

Partly because I don’t think Caro—or Sean—are wrong about Bell’s potential sociopathy.

Zenny gives me an evaluating look. “Well, you don’t seem too bothered by the idea at least.”

I like Bell’s family and I want them to like me too, so I curate my answer accordingly. “He’s a wonderful boyfriend.”

Her look remains evaluating, but she seems to decide to shelve the topic. She gives a roll of her neck and starts massaging her shoulder while she watches her children chase lightning bugs at the far end of the yard. “You were great with Caro, by the way. I was watching you two before she started talking nonsense, and you managed to get around her perfectionism long enough for her to try something new. Are you a teacher?”

I’m glad the only lights are the ones strung over the patio and those coming from the house’s windows because I know my face is turning beet red. Bell and I had agreed on a mostly true—and heavily redacted—version of events, but we’ve also managed to avoid relaying those events all evening, much to my relief. Absurd that I’m being kept as Bell’s sexual pet, but I’m worried that his family will think I took advantage of him when he was in college.

But why wouldn’t they? It’s what Kaitlyn believed, and the staff at Evelyn.

Bell had only laughed when I’d brought up my qualms.

Trust me, baby, the last thing my family is going to worry about is someone taking advantage of me. I could tell them that you were my professor and my cardiologist and the judge at my traffic ticket hearing all at the same time, and Sean would still think I’m the villain.

“I was,” I finally answer. “Just for a semester at Evelyn College. I wasn’t any good at it. I have some anxiety around large groups of people.” And everything else.

“Maybe you just need to teach smaller groups,” Zenny says, pushing her shoulder forward and backward. “Or individually. I actually think there are a lot of people who’d love to learn from someone as gentle as you. It would be a lovely gift to share, you know?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” I say with a weak smile.

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Zenny waves her hand. “When you’re ready, I know a whole roster of places that would love to have an artist willing to volunteer and teach. Women’s centers, queer youth centers, after-school programs, eldercare programs—a lot of them have or want to have community art classes, but they’re some of the first things to fall away when budgets get tight.”

Volunteer and teach.I rub my hand over my heart as I consider this. I’ve felt helpless in my own life for so long that the idea of helping other people is so much more than ridiculous—it literally hasn’t even occurred to me. How can I have anything to give when life has taken everything from me already?

Zenny isn’t looking at me—she’s still got her eyes on the children—but there’s a prescience in her words when she says, “I’ve always found that helping other people somehow ends up helping me too. It’s kind of magical that way.”

I keep chafing at my chest as I nod. It does seem like magic.

“So you taught at Evelyn?”

The topic change is expected, but my face grows hot all over again. How I wish Bell were here to have this conversation with Zenny instead of me. “Yes. A semester seven years ago. Like I said, I wasn’t very good at it.”

“So you were there while Ryan was there?”

Deep breath. “Yes. He was my student that semester.”

“I see,” Zenny says. She doesn’t sound ready to kick me off her patio, which is a relief. “And that carving in front of city hall?”

“Yes. That was me.”

“You gave the devil Ryan’s face.”

“I did.”

I expect more questions then, the ones she must be asking herself—about when we started our relationship and how and why and what reason I had to make her brother-in-law into a fallen angel for the world to see—and I know the answers we’re going to give everyone. That we kissed at Evelyn the week of his graduation and were caught by administration, that we lost touch after. That he found me after the statue appeared and confessed that he still thought of me and then we agreed to try a relationship. I’m ready to tell her our half-truths and have it over with.

But she doesn’t ask the questions. Instead, she laughs as she starts stretching her other shoulder. “Good for you.”

Aiden appearson the patio to bring the good news of Popsicles to the kids, and Zenny stalls the stampede long enough to make everyone empty their squirt guns and drop them in a bin of outdoor toys. She goes upstairs to change, and once I’m alone, anxiety chews through my thoughts about what to do, where to go. I feel shy about going into the house and being perceived, but I’m also aware that it’s silly to be hiding here on the patio. I’m extraneous to this family, an unnecessary presence, but I’m welcome here too, and I wish Bell would come out and steer me somewhere, herd me like a bossy collie to wherever I should be.

I close my eyes, sending up a wordless prayer, and then open them.

Caro’s iPad. That’s something I can do that won’t be obtrusive or worthy of notice. I’ll take the iPad in and then find Lilith and start gathering up the cat things. Usefulandstill out of the way.