In this moment, Frida consumed him. One day, though, he knew he would come back for Kali.
Chapter Four
Kali liked ice cream almost as much as her mother did. She just didn’t want it all the time. But sometimes, she woke up early and wanted to start the day with a jolt of cold sweetness. And sometimes, when her mother stayed out late, she woke up wanting to be at home instead of at her Uncle Laneer’s. On days like this, she liked to slip out his back door at dawn and walk down the creekbank to the back door of her own house.
She was closing the freezer door when she heard the sounds in her front yard. Ice cream sandwich in hand, she peered out the front window first, then out her bedroom window, and then out the window at the top of the back door. She saw nothing in the half-darkness but shapes and motion, but the sounds she heard were horrible.
Her mother’s bedroom was empty. Kali tried to connect the dots between the empty bed and the sounds that were rapidly fading into the distance, but she couldn’t make her mind work. She couldn’t think at all, but she could run.
Slipping out the back door and closing it quietly behind her, she listened for thudding footsteps and the sounds of a struggle, and she followed them.
Chapter Five
The ground was cold—so cold—and it was hard. Even in July, and even in Memphis, the ground is cold after a long night without the sun, and it is hard when it is rushing up to strike you.
Frida struggled to her feet, knowing that it would get her nothing but another fist in her face. He’d knocked her down, striking her in the jaw with his closed fist. She’d struggled to her feet, only to have him do it again and again.
She was young, only twenty-six, so none of her pliant bones broke when she hit the ground. Frida was no athlete, so she’d never learned to fall. Each time he hit her, she collapsed like a bundle of twigs suddenly untied. She was slender, so she heard the clatter as her uncushioned bones struck the hard ground. Each time, he yanked her back to her feet, holding her in his iron grip while he slapped her and shook her and slapped her some more. And then, again, he doubled up the fist and knocked her to the ground, waiting until she scrabbled to her knees to reach his big hand out to grab the fabric of her dress and yank her upright.
It had only been minutes since she’d stood in her own driveway, suffused in the warm glow of a first date that had gone very well. She’d been on too many first dates to take this warm glow seriously, but she’d lived too many hard days not to appreciate a good one when it came. She had wondered at herself for shedding her customary wariness, born of a lot of hard years, for this man. An all-night first date was out of the ordinary for her, but he was no stranger and tonight had been a long time in coming. Hope for the future had been a long time in coming, too, but she owned it, if only for a night.
The black sky, the dark prickles of starshine, the pink haze of dawn in the east, all of it had made her happy to be alive. She’d stood for more than a minute on the broken cement of her front sidewalk, taking it in. Then she’d bowed her head over her purse and foraged for her keys, one for the doorknob and one for the stout deadbolt that had cost her more money than she’d wanted to spare. She’d learned the hard way that a door without a deadbolt was an open invitation, scraping together the money for this one when her unbolted door was broken by someone who wanted to take what little she had.
Disaster had happened in the last moments of the sun’s battle with the streetlights, when it was light enough to see but not light enough to see well. Her attacker had come from behind, so she couldn’t see his face, but she could tell that he was twice her size. This was no real identifier. Everybody was twice her size. She had a bird-like body that wasn’t of much use beyond catching the attention of men.
If he’d grabbed her an instant later, she might have had the keys in her hand. She thought she might have been able to rake them across his eyes and get away, but maybe not. Her shoes’ heels were too high for an escape quick enough to save her. Their straps were barely wide enough to bind them to her feet. The odds that she could have shaken off his grip and outrun him were achingly low, but if she’d had her keys to use for weapons, she could have tried.
He had easily lifted her off those teetering heels and wrapped a long arm around her middle. Before she could draw in a breath to use for screaming, he’d stunned her with a hard slap and carried her, running behind her house and through her back yard, taking a hard turn when he reached the creek.
His grip had slipped, but not enough to let her escape him. Her feet had dragged through briars that whipped around her legs, digging their thorns into her bare ankles. At some point, one of them snagged a sandal strap and yanked her shoe right off her foot.
The arm encircling her chest had been a python crushing the breath out
