Page 126 of Rest In Pink

“Of course,” George said, looking insulted that I’d had to ask. He looked down at Mickey. “You shot him in the back, Danger? You finally watched that movie.”

He lost me there. “What movie?”

“High Noon,” Vince said. He laughed then and winced. I think it was just the release of tension, or maybe I’d missed something about that damn movie. “She’s never seen it, George.”

“You okay?” George said to him.

“I will be,” he said, and handed George my gun.

Anemone’s gun.

“Pink?” George said to me, appalled.

“It’s a loaner,” I said. “From Anemone. Good luck in the future.”

I looked at Mickey grunting in pain as Mac and his partner lifted him onto the stretcher. I was waiting for the guilt and the shame that was Burney to roll over me because I’d shot somebody. I looked at the monster who’d tried to wipe out my family, at the devil who’d shot the man I loved, and waited for the guilt.

And all I thought was,Good.

* * *

Vince followedme back up to the Blue House, which wasn’t blue anymore. The outside was scorched and blistered and it looked like it had the mange. Anemone and Peri were standing outside when I pulled up, and Peri ran to me and threw her arms around me and I picked her up and held her.

“So, exciting huh?” I said, looking at the mansion mess in front of us.

“You weren’t here,” she said, accusation in her voice.

“I had to go someplace, but Anemone was with you,” I said. “We have your back, Peri, always.”

She nodded but hung on to me, so we talked about the bears, and she told me they weresoakedas if the sprinklers had been fun, not traumatic, so with Mac’s permission—he said, “Jesus, that’s a lot of bears”—we moved them all out to the driveway, away from the soot to dry in the sun. Three hundred and eighty plus sopping wet bears all lined up is a bizarre look. There’s a real cognitive dissonance in shooting somebody in the morning and trying to save a bunch of teddy bears in the afternoon.

Anemone found a laundry service that came and took all our clothes and promised to have them back the next day. God knows what that cost her. She said she was going to stay with George and told Peri to come along, but Peri said, “No,” and clung to me. I told Peri I was going to stay with Vince and Peri said she was, too.

So I packed her into the car, and we went to the next town and she picked out new pjs for us—pink that said “Happy Bunny” for her and lavender that said “Sleepy Bunny” for me—and new underwear and two t-shirts—she picked out a design that had an octopus riding a bicycle for both of us and that worked for me—and two pizzas, and then I drove her to the Big Chef, which she thought was wonderful, and when we went inside, the Vince bear was on Vince’s bed where I’d left it. She had a piece of pizza, and then she climbed in Vince’s bed and hugged the bear and made me come with her, and fell asleep with her arms wrapped around the bear and me.

And I tried to make everything that had happened that day make sense. My world had Mickey Pitts in it and I’d shot him, and now I was wearing Sleepy Bunny pajamas.

And I thought about Anemone, who’d just had a house set on fire. It wasn’t her house, but she’d settled in, and now somebody had made it impossible for her to live there, at least for tonight. I wondered what that would do to her, if it would make her want to leave or convince her to stay. Because whatever else the Blue House was, it was a house and it had been hers for a while.

But mostly I thought about Vince. I was going to have to give him the good news that I was staying, that Peri and Anemone needed me, that he needed me. I thought he’d be good with that, but I was also going to have to tell him that I wanted more. Not sure how he’d feel about that. Mostly, I just wanted himwith me.

When he finally came home to the diner, we re-heated the pizza, and he didn’t say much. He looked dog tired and smelled of smoke, so he took a shower and set up an air mattress in the hall by the bathroom. The only thing he said when he saw Peri asleep was, “Is she okay?” and I said, “Yes,” because if one thing had become evident to me over the past two weeks, the kid was a survivor. All we had to do was keep her safe from anything else she’d have to survive so she’d have some recovery time. This was one little girl who desperately needed to be bored.

But when he kissed me good-night, he held on, and it wasn’t the usual I-want-you-naked hold, he was tentative, and when I leaned in, he said, “Do not die.”

“Yeah, you, too,” I said and kissed him again, and thought how right it was to be where I was, but then he winced when I pressed against his chest, so I said, “Get some sleep,” and went to crawl in beside Peri.

It had been a very bad, very good day. I had shot somebody, but I’d stopped a killer. I was keeping a little girl safe enough that she could sleep in the safest place I knew. I desperately needed to sort things out in my mind, but a minute after my head hit the pillow, I was gone in a sleep so deep nothing would have woken me up.

FRIDAY

Posted on BurneyCommunityNews on Facebook, Friday 9AM:

SO THAT WAS EXCITING

Look, this place is the ass end of nowhere with nothing to do and very little to see, but it’s our town, so if whoever is lighting matches all over the place would just stop, we would appreciate it. I mean, that blue pavilion was butt ugly, but it would have been easier to paint it than rebuild it. And burning down people’s houses? That’s just wrong. I would be more concerned, but there is a rumor that a dour detective and his feisty girlfriend may have put out an arsonist yesterday. That has not been confirmed, I can’t see everything from up here. However, I do have faith in Dour and Feisty. Stay tuned for more shocking events and smart-assed speculation. You will not be disappointed.

Also buy a fire extinguisher just in case. In fact, get two.