Chapter 1: A Quiet Interview
The air in the kitchen was thick enough to chew. It held the lingering grease of fried okra and the sweet, cloying decay of old gardenias, all stirred into a lukewarm soup by the lazy rotation of a ceiling fan overhead. Sunlight, tired and yellow, strained through faded gingham curtains, painting a checkered pattern across the scarred wooden table where Deputy Sara Morgan sat, feeling decidedly out of place.
“Mighty kind of you to come out so quick, Officer,” Emma said, her voice a slow, warm drawl like molasses dripping from a spoon. She didn’t look like a woman in distress. She sat perfectly still in her cane-backed chair, dressed in a simple, sleeveless shift the color of faded moss. Her hands were relaxed on the table, the knuckles knotted but clean. Her eyes, a pale, watery blue, never left Sara’s face.“It’s Deputy, ma’am.Deputy Morgan. And it’s no trouble.” Sara’s own voice sounded too high, too crisp in the humid room.She shifted on the hard seat, the starch of her uniform shirt scratching her neck. She could feel a single bead of sweat tracing a slow path down her spine. Her feet, neatly laced into polished patent leather Oxfords, were already sweating inside their short white socks. She’d knotted the laces tightly this morning, a habit of fastidiousness. Her ankles, as always, were invisible, swallowed by the precise drape of her black trouser legs.
She placed her notepad on the table with a soft tap, the only official sound in the room. “You said on the phone there was a prowler?”
“Thought I saw one,” Emma corrected gently.“Last night. Out by the old equipment shed. Shadow didn’t look right.” She took a slow sip of iced tea from a jar, the condensation wetting her fingers. “Might’ve just been a deer.This old place, the woods get pushy after dark. But a woman alone… you understand.”
“Of course,” Sara said, scribbling a note she knew was pointless. Complaint of a shadow.Probably deer. She was twenty-three, and this was her first solo call that wasn’t a traffic stop or a neighbor’s noise complaint. She wanted to be thorough, to project competence.“Did you see a vehicle? Hear anything?”
“Just the cicadas.” Emma smiled, a faint crack in her weathered face.“They scream all night this time of year. Sound like the trees are crying.”
Sara nodded, pretending the poetic observation was evidence. Under the table, she crossed her ankles, the patent leather squeaking softly in the quiet. The kitchen hummed with dormant appliances and the fan’s monotonous thrum.
“Your feet must be baking in those,” Emma said suddenly, her tone conversational.Sara blinked. “Ma’am?”
“Those smart shoes.All closed up. In this heat?” Emma’s gaze dropped to the tabletop, as if she could see through the wood. “My nephew, he wore boots like that for a parade once. Came home with blisters the size of quarters.”
“They’re regulation,” Sara said, a defensive flutter in her chest.She uncrossed her ankles.
“Regulation don’t mean comfortable.” Emma sighed, a sound of deep empathy. “You’re so young to be carrying all that authority.It must be a weight.”
It was.Sara felt it every day. The badge felt heavy on her crisp shirt. She didn’t know how to answer, so she looked back at her notepad. “About the shed, Mrs.… I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your last name.”
“Just Emma, darling. Everyone ‘round here just calls me Emma.” She pushed her chair back slightly, the legs scraping against the linoleum. “Would you like some tea? I think I’m being a poor hostess.”
“Oh, no, thank you, I’m fine.”
But Emma was already up, moving to the counter with a slow, deliberate grace.The moment stretched. Sara looked at her blank notepad, then out the window at the overgrown garden.The silence felt different now, charged. She heard a soft scuffling sound under the table.Probably a cat, she thought.Emma seemed like a cat person.
Then, a pressure against her left foot.Not a cat.It was firm, deliberate. The sole of a foot, she realized with a jolt, pressing against the side of her Oxford.
Before she could react, the pressure changed. It became a hook, a surprisingly strong instep curling around the heel of her shoe.Sara froze, her pen stopping mid-word.
“Ma’am?” she squeaked.Under the table, Emma’s foot twisted.A sharp, efficient jerk. Sara felt the tight knot of her lace dig into her ankle, then give way. The sensation was surreal, disconnected. She watched Emma’s serene face above the table as, below, her Oxford was neatly, forcefully, pried from her foot. She felt the pop of the heel leaving her sock, the sudden, shocking cool of the kitchen air on her damp sole through the cotton.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. “What are you—”
Emma’s foot retreated, then returned, not for the shoe, but for the sock.The cotton was thinner, easier. Sara felt a fingernail—a toenail—catch on the elastic at the top.A swift, downward scrape. The sock peeled away, rolling down her foot like a banana skin until it bunched around her toes and was finally, completely, tugged off.Sara was paralyzed, a statue in her chair. Shock held her in a vise.This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be a part of the call.Emma sat back down at the table, her expression unchanged. She rested her elbows on the wood, lacing her fingers together. “There now,” she said, as if commenting on the weather.“That’s better, isn’t it?”
Sara couldn’t speak. Her left foot was naked, exposed to the dusty, humid air under Emma’s table. It felt huge, vulnerable. She was acutely aware of the dampness between her toes, the grit from her patrol car floor, the sticky feeling of sweat-dried skin. Her toenails, painted a secret, cheerful red last Sunday evening, glared up from the dim space like ten tiny accusations.
Then Emma moved her own foot.It was bare, too, Sara saw now. Pale, long, with a high arch and clean, clipped nails. It hovered for a moment in the space between them, then descended. The warm, dry sole of Emma’s foot came to rest, firmly and utterly, on top of Sara’s bare, sweating instep.
The contact was electric, a claim staked. Sara flinched, but Emma’s foot held her down, a gentle, inescapable weight. It was a touch more intimate than any handshake, more possessive than a hand on her shoulder.Emma’s toes curled slightly, applying a subtle pressure.
“You have lovely feet, Sara,” Emma said, her voice still that same slow drip of molasses.“Small. High arches.You take care of them, I can see. Even if you do hide them away.”
Sara’s breath hitched.She was a deputy sheriff.She carried a gun. She should stand up, should shout, should arrest this woman for… for what?Assault? It felt both too small and too large a word for the violation humming up her leg.
Emma leaned forward slightly, her pale eyes capturing Sara’s. “The shoe smelled of hard work and honest sweat, darling. I thought it needed some air.” With a casual kick of her own foot, she sent Sara’s discarded Oxford skittering from under the table. It clunked against the back door. Emma rose, picked up the shoe, then bent and retrieved the balled-up white sock. She opened the screen door and tossed both out onto the wooden porch with a dismissive flick of her wrist.
She closed the door and turned back, her gaze falling to Sara’s trapped foot, then rising to meet her wide, confused eyes. Emma smiled, a real smile this time, reaching her eyes. “Now,” she said, sitting back down and settling her foot more comfortably atop Sara’s, a flag planted on conquered territory.“Where were we? The shadow by the shed?”
Outside, the first heavy drops of a sudden summer rain began to fall. They pattered on the tin roof, a rising chorus. On the weathered porch boards, the patent leather Oxford began to darken with the wet. Next to it, the crumpled white sock soaked up the rainwater, the grime from Sara’s foot slowly bleeding out to form a pale, grayish halo around it.