At the Bottom of the Bay

Chapter Twelve

Why had the cold finally left her?

Sofia looked around, but she was still alone, as far as she could tell. The crowd in the bar couldn't see her from this angle. The businesses on Main Street remained quiet and still. Scraggly bushes at the sand's edge blocked Bosco from view. Sofia just had to walk away and then she was in the clear, right?

The air wouldn't enter her lungs. She sucked and sucked, but her throat constricted, suffocating her. She wondered if this was a panic attack. Now was not the time for a panic attack.

She turned and started walking. Away from town, away from civilization. Her shoulders shook, tremors wracking her frame, and finally that sob in her chest broke free, tears blurring her vision.

It was incredibly inconvenient.

She just killed a man. A fucking cop.

She didn't know why she was crying.

The tears came from so deep inside, a part of her that she'd thought she lost. The broken bit that she'd left behind somewhere.

She was going to go to jail.

She was fucked.

There isn't time to cry about this right now!

But the tears came, even as she berated herself for them. She was split in two, a messy, sobbing imbecile who felt remorse and horror at what she'd done, and a calm, rational monster, who just wanted to plan the next step, figure out how to get out of this.

The next step was not to just walk away from a murder scene and leave the body for anyone to find, so it was clear her imbecile side was in control, carrying her away, carrying her home.

No, it was not her rational, working brain that took her down the long, empty road to the south side of town. Whatever it was that made her walk to Kelsey's McQuarrie's house, it wasn't the real Sofia. She didn't exist anymore.

The sea roared next to her as she walked, drowning out her breathing, the sound of her heartbeat, the gulls and terns circling overhead. It cheered for her, an applause, urging her on, urging her forward, keeping her company as she escaped.

She knocked on the screen door before she could think better of it, then hid her blood slick hands behind her back. A woman appeared on the other side, her frizzy dishwater blond hair cut short and streaked with white, her grey eyes faded and hard. Besides the colouring, she looked nothing like her daughter, much taller, wiry in a way that suggested years of hard labour.

"Can I help you?" She didn't open the screen door, looking at Sofia like she was a bug banging to get in.

"I, um... Is Kelsey here?" Sofia felt like a child asking if her friend could come to the park to play.

Mrs. McQuarrie looked confused now. "She's at the shop. She works Monday to Friday."

"Okay." Sofia looked down, unable to maintain eye contact, and noticed what she was wearing; a T-shirt from the local thrift store that she'd purchased for herself for her eighteenth birthday, a gag gift, that said "women want me, fish fear me" and baggy grey jean shorts that she had a vague memory of making into cut-offs. To say she was unaware of picking her clothes that morning would be an understatement, and apparently her id thought this was an appropriate outfit for her first day of work and now for meeting the judgemental, possibly fundamentalist parents of her not-really-her-girlfriend girlfriend. Her id was fucking stupid, which also explained the murder and the zero instinct for self preservation. She hated when Kelsey was right.