Wink by Eric Trant Page B

scratches along the sides where either Marty or the prior owner had polished the blade.
    “What is this?” Sadie didn’t answer, and her mom stared at her with her mean-mommy eyes. With her cheeks flushed and her chest heaving from the run through the yard, holding a knife big enough to pin Sadie to the wall like a dead butterfly, her mom looked intimidating and frightening. Sadie saw a woman capable of things she didn’t want to consider her mom capable of, and if her legs had worked, she would have turned and run.
    “It’s Marty’s,” Sadie said. She almost whispered it.
    Her mom screamed at her. It made her skin crawl and the air shifted. “I know it’s Marty’s, Sadie! What are you doing with a knife?”
    “I don’t know,” Sadie said. The tears welled up fast into a sudden burst. Her heart had already been pounding, and now rather than blood it seemed to pump tears straight up through her neck, through the back of her throat, and out of her eyes and nose. “I don’t know, Mommy, it’s Marty’s, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s Marty’s.”
    The words choked out and hung between them. Her mom didn’t move but waited until Sadie bled out a cup of tears and finally wiped her face against her sleeve. It took a couple of minutes, quite a few breaths, and a million heartbeats. Sadie’s sleeve came away wet and snotty.
    When she looked up at her mom, Sadie couldn’t tell if the woman had moved or even breathed. She held the knife in front of her, turned it over in her hand, and shook her head. She spoke and it was far more quiet and self-controlled than before, as if she had reduced the roiling boil to a simmer.
    “I told you, Sadie. I told you. I told you not to bring the devil into this house. What do you think this is? Will this lead you down a good path or a bad path?”
    Sadie didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
    “A bad path,” her mom said. “The devil strikes fast, Sadie-love.” Her mom stepped across the pea gravel and squatted on her heels, putting herself eye-level with Sadie. “I love you, honey. You know that, don’t you? I love you more than anything on this Earth. I didn’t mean to scream at you. I’m sorry but that’s what the devil does. He strikes fast.” Her mom held the knife up and twisted it to make sure Sadie saw it from all angles. “Then he drives a wedge between those you love. He works his evil one bite at a time, with little mouse-nibbles you won’t notice until there’s a big hole in your life. This is a choice, Sadie. This is your crossroads. There’s a point in our lives where we choose a path that leads us toward God or away from Him.”
    Sadie’s mom stood and pointed the knife toward Marty’s house. “You’ve been obsessing over him for a year now, baby. I finally let you meet him and the first thing he gives you is a gift. Is this the sort of gift you want?”
    “No, Momma,” Sadie said.
    “And what do you think we should do with this little gift of his?”
    “Give it back.”
    “Give it back is right,” her mom said. “Stay here.”
    Sadie’s mom walked into the driveway and looked right, toward the feeder road in front of the property and searched the yard and the house. She walked to the hurricane fence, put her free hand on it, and after a few more seconds of looking around she launched the knife over the fence into Marty’s yard.
    When they got into the house Sadie’s mom pushed her into the front living room and said, “We’re going to have some sweet tea, you and I, and I am going to tell you about Betsy and Cooper Babineaux.”
    Her mom ducked into the kitchen, and Sadie watched the cars on I-10 blow past the front bay window. Sometimes she counted the diesels that passed. She was up to twenty-three when her mom touched her shoulder and placed a glass of iced tea on the stand next to her chair.
    Her mom sat on the couch, took a sip of her tea and set the glass on the coffee table. “That lady over there, Marty’s mom, she