The bedroom reverberated with Sage’s nighttime breaths and the air in here was as soft as velvet. Verdi trod quickly through the softness, her harsh breaths almost gasps now, a stark contrast to the innocence pervading the room. She focused only on the corner of the room as the miniature touch lamp illuminated the nightstand, the brass drawer pulls. She couldn’t allow her eyes to fall on Sage’s back, her arm that curved under her head, the side of her face. Her Sage whom she thought she could love no more even if she’d birthed her herself, her sister’s child—no, no, her cousin’s child. She shook her head telling herself to get a grip, even as a silhouette of her father’s broken face came at her in this darkened room, the way his face had appeared after he’d finished the story about the roads. Her cousin’s child. She said it with finality. Stopped then and held her breath while Sage shifted in her sleep and tossed and turned to the other side. This was such a big-ass room, she thought as she started walking again. Too big to be a bedroom. Why did she even allow Rowe to talk her into making this a bedroom? This was a reception room, Rowe. She said his name out loud, startled the darkness that rippled with the sound of his name, as if this room had already forgotten Rowe, how long would it take for her to forget him? she asked herself as she was at the nightstand now, her hand wrapped around the hard, cold brass pull that could be the handle to a steel-encased coffin. She nudged the drawer open and the sound of wood against wood as the drawer extended out was like a burst of thunder in her ear. And then even the thunderburst dissolved and fizzled into the velvet blackness as her eye found the plastic bag, the substance and the works he’d called it, oh God, how sweet, how sweet of him to do this for her, he’d always been so good to her she thought as she fought back tears and put her hand around the bag as if she were reaching through a flame. She ran into her bathroom then with all power in her hand. She was doing it again, perverting a hymn. She was hell-bound anyhow, she thought now, read her Bible every morning, said her prayers every night, still going straight to hell because Johnson was right, she had no faith. No faith. Johnson, Johnson. She was crying now, in her bathroom, the door pushed shut, running water to cover up the sound of her cries so that her cries wouldn’t wake Sage, wishing that she’d been exposed twenty years ago the way Johnson had been exposed, because a lie suppressed can never come back as the truth, comes back like this, she thought, like a junkie leaning over her bathroom counter getting ready to cook. “Oh shit, somebody help me,” she whispered as she called on the name of Johnson, now Rowe, now her daddy, always some man taking care of her, saving her from herself, and they never could, no wizards, no white-armored knights, she thought as she cooked it up in a spoon, to liquefy its contents to make it ready for her arm, how generous of him to put it all in this plastic bag. She turned the water off and reached for her white chenille robe that hung on the back of the bathroom door, snatched the belt through the loops then wrapped the belt, tighter, tighter, wrapped it around her arm.