“Pick those pieces up properly, Phedra,” my mother, Selina, called from inside. “If somebody cuts themselves, I’m taking it out of your food.”
I stopped behind the fence with my suitcase still in my hand.
No one knew I was there.
Godfrey walked into the yard wearing designer sneakers and a gold watch I knew he could never have afforded four years earlier. He carried a glass of scotch.
“Hurry up. We need the dinner plates.”
“I feel dizzy,” Phedra whispered. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
Godfrey laughed.
“With everything you stole, you should be able to buy yourself a feast.”
My hand tightened around the suitcase handle. Every instinct in me screamed to walk through that gate and put my brother on the ground. But four years working around industrial machinery had taught me something useful: when a machine begins making a sound it shouldn’t, you don’t immediately reach inside. You listen first. The sound tells you where the failure started.
