Little Doll already fell apart, I heard Wolfe’s voice tell me. She fell apart, broken, and dragged herself back to a place she swore she would never go, locked herself in the dark, punished herself for all the wrongs she’d ever done, and swore she’d never come out again. The Little Doll’s heart was broken; her fate was set, and she surrendered herself to die, to waste away locked in the dark for all the days of her life.
“No,” I said, shaking my head, trying to cast off the weight of the feelings that were bearing down on me hard now. “I’m not … I’m not broken. Not yet. I can hold it together. I can. I didn’t need your help, your push. I’m just … hurt. Just a little damaged. But I’ll make them pay, and that will fix …” I heard the hollow sound of my voice, trying to persuade me, “… fix … everything.” I didn’t even believe it when I finished saying it.
Worse than the hollow words that echoed in my ears was the silence that followed from the voices in my head. It was a silence that told me that every one of them was sure I would have been finished if not for their help—and no more likely to be put back together than anything else that had been irreparably destroyed.
15.
It was after nightfall when I pulled into the parking lot of yet another bar. I was in a town called Hamel, Minnesota, and the bar was a faded white building with cracking paint. It wasn’t as showy as the one I’d been in a few days earlier when I met Kurt, but then this place wasn’t the same, either. It was a small town, and I could see both sides of it from where I’d parked on the main street. In a way it reminded me of Glencoe, a town that wasn’t even there anymore, one that I’d been the last living person to leave. I filed that thought away for later, hoping that random memory was completely unrelated to what I was about to experience here. Snow was coming down all around me now, clinging to my hair as I crossed the quiet main street. It was late—after eleven but before midnight—and it had been snowing for a few hours now.
I stepped into the quiet room, scanning the entire place in one smooth movement. I found my target, in the corner, his back to me and a beer hoisted in the air in front of him. He had a crowd with him, and it was the only table in the place that was occupied. It was a weeknight, and these were the hardcore drinkers, the ones who drank every night of the week. He was right in the middle of them, just one of the guys. I tried to decide what to do about that, and finally figured I’d just walk up and tap him on the shoulder.
Before I could even get halfway across the room, he turned to the bartender. “Hey! Another round for my friends!” His sandy-blond hair came off his scalp in curls, and the faux smile on his face might have fooled almost anyone else but not me. He was sloshed and wearing a kind of fake-happy grin that kept him going through one drink after another. He waved at the barman, who was already in motion, as a chorus of cheers and hoisted glasses around the table in the corner let me know what his companions thought of his generosity.
One of the drunks at his table who was facing me was the first to notice my approach. I wasn’t wearing the sunglasses, but I did have on my long black coat, and so far as I knew, I probably looked like some lesser version of the angel of death. The first one to see me nudged the guy next to him in the ribs with an elbow, and one by one the table quieted down until the only one still talking boisterously was the one I was here to see.
“Hey,” one of his compatriots interrupted him as I hovered behind the blond-haired man. “Someone’s here to see you.” The guy stood and glared me down. “You aren’t … Kat … .are you?” There was a touch of menace in his voice.
I would have rolled my eyes at him, but instead I fired off the hardest glare I could imagine as Scott Byerly swiveled in his chair to face me, his head dipping enough that I knew he’d already had plenty to drink. “Kat?” he said as he saw me. I caught the millimeter fall in his facial expression from disappointment before he spoke again. “No, guys, this isn’t Kat. This is Sienna.” He let out a low, unserious laugh. “They are not the same person at all.” He paused a beat. “Thank God.”
“Thank Him once for me as well,” I said, standing over Scott with my arms crossed.
Scott laughed again, but it wasn’t mirthful. “You should join us. We were just drinking.”