Chương 2
“You sit there judging everyone like filing paperwork makes you an expert.”
Donovan said her name quietly.
She ignored him.
“My sister handles supply work,” Fiona told the table.
“Equipment logs, inventory reports, warehouse stuff.”
I watched Arthur smile before she delivered the rest.
“Maybe she’s only good at counting bullets in the warehouse.”
A few people laughed automatically.
Arthur laughed loudest.
I felt the old response rise in me with humiliating familiarity.
Heat behind my ears.
A tight throat.
The desire to disappear without appearing to retreat.
When we were teenagers, Fiona could provoke me into silence and then use the silence as evidence that she had won.
Arthur always admired the winner.
I put my glass down.
“Inventory discrepancies,” I said.
Fiona blinked.
“What?”
“That’s one of the things I handle.”
“Congratulations.”
“Training documentation too.”
The laughter stopped.
Arthur’s face hardened.
“Joselyn.”
I looked at Fiona.
Her right hand had moved unconsciously toward the badge.
“You should stop talking about things you can’t document.”
Donovan stared between us.
Raymond no longer pretended to eat.
Fiona pushed back her chair.
The legs scraped loudly over the patio stones.
“You know what?”
She stood.
“Why don’t we settle this?”
“Settle what?”
Donovan asked.
Fiona pointed across the yard toward the tree line where Arthur’s private range sat beyond a locked gate.
“A little competition.”
Arthur’s irritation vanished almost instantly.
He liked competitions because they produced rankings.
“Fi,” Donovan said, “this is our engagement party.”
“Five minutes.”
She looked at me.
“Unless Joselyn doesn’t want to.”
Phones had already begun appearing.
That bothered me more than the insult.
A cousin I barely knew was recording.
Two of Donovan’s friends whispered to each other while angling their screens toward us.
Fiona saw them and became brighter.
More certain.
She had an audience again.
“Come on, Jo.”
She stepped around the table.
“Let’s see if you can handle a real rifle.”
“Enough,” Donovan said.
Fiona kept looking at me.
“Or are you only good at counting bullets?”
Arthur chuckled.
I looked at him.
For a moment I saw him twenty years younger at our kitchen table, praising Fiona’s soccer trophy while my mathematics certificate disappeared beneath a grocery circular.
It wasn’t the memory that made me stand.
It was the badge.
I folded my napkin and set it beside my plate.
“All right.”
Fiona’s expression changed.
Barely.
“You’re serious?”
“You suggested it.”
Arthur laughed.
“Well, this I’ve got to see.”
Donovan caught my arm as people began leaving their chairs.
“Joselyn.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“That isn’t what I’m worried about.”
“I know.”
“What is happening?”
I looked past him at Fiona.
She was walking toward the range with Arthur beside her, already explaining the rules to people who had not asked.
“Something that should’ve happened privately.”
“Then why are you doing it publicly?”
That stopped me.
Because he was right.
I had spent three weeks telling myself I wanted to protect Fiona from humiliation.
Now humiliation had been offered to me in return, and some ugly part of me wanted to hand it back.
“I don’t know,” I said.
It was the first honest thing I had said all evening.
Donovan released my arm.
Beyond him, Fiona glanced over her shoulder.
“Coming?”
I bent beside my chair and opened the canvas bag I had brought from my car.
The evaluation file was inside a plain folder beneath the cardigan I hadn’t needed.
I had brought copies because I had planned to speak with Fiona after the party.
Privately.
I slid the folder out.
Donovan looked at it.
“What’s that?”
“Something she should see.”
“Should everyone else?”
I didn’t answer.
The range lights came on beyond the trees.
Arthur had unlocked the gate.
Guests drifted after him in loose groups, still holding drinks until Raymond began telling them alcohol and firearms were a bad combination.
Several people reluctantly abandoned their glasses on a patio table.
I followed last.
The folder felt heavier than paper should.
Arthur’s range was modest but carefully maintained, with covered firing positions and an earthen backstop.
He treated it like proof that moving outside town had been a wise financial decision instead of something he’d done because his neighbors complained about his generator.
Fiona was already selecting a rifle from the locked cabinet.
“Not that one,” Raymond said.
She looked irritated.
“Why?”
“Because you’ve been drinking.”
“I had one glass.”
“Then you can wait.”
Arthur frowned.
“She’s fine.”
Raymond faced him.
“I didn’t ask you.”
Silence spread in an uneven circle.
Arthur wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to that way on his property.
For once, he seemed unable to decide which performance would make him look more important.
Fiona set the rifle down.
“Fine.”
She turned to me.
“Tomorrow morning.”
I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the entire ridiculous spectacle had suddenly become a scheduled family event.
“You want everyone to come back tomorrow?”
I asked.
“No.”
She glanced at the phones.
“I want you to stop acting like you know what I can do.”
I held the folder against my leg.
“This was never about what I can do.”
Her gaze dropped to it.
Something in her face disappeared.
Not confidence exactly.
Something underneath confidence.
“What is that?”
Arthur answered before I could.
“Probably one of her damn spreadsheets.”
Nobody laughed this time.
Fiona stepped closer.
“What did you bring?”
I could hear insects beyond the range lights and someone walking back toward the patio in shoes that clicked awkwardly on the gravel.
I had imagined giving Fiona these pages in her kitchen.
I had imagined anger, denial, maybe tears.
I had never imagined thirty people watching.
I opened the folder.
Fiona saw the first page.
Her face went still.
Arthur leaned toward it.
“What is that?”
Fiona didn’t answer him.
Her eyes had found the signature at the bottom.
Then the evaluation code.
Then the line beside her name.
She reached for the paper.
I pulled it back.
May you like
“Where did you get that?”
she whispered.
