The Ninth Step by Barbara Taylor Sissel Page A

one over on him. It’s not happening again. If I was those crooks working his neighborhood?--I wouldn’t choose his house to break into, that’s for damn sure.”
    Anita interrupted. “Would you listen to yourself?” She was plainly exasperated. “You’re as good as saying if Latimer finds out--let’s make that when he finds out, he’ll kill you. You have to turn yourself in.”
    “Not until the job is done.”
    “That job--it’s worth your life?”
    “I owe it to them, to Nikki.”
    “God, you are so hopeless.”
    Cotton said he knew it; he said he’d been out to Livie’s, that he’d gone onto her porch but couldn’t bring himself to knock.
    “What if you had? What if she’d opened the door? What would you have done then?”
    “I don’t know. Sometimes, I go and it’s enough to just sit there.”
    “You’re in worse shape than I thought.” Anita waited a bit and said, “I hate to be the nag, but are you going to meetings? Did you get a sponsor? Are you talking to anyone or just chasing this garbage around in your own head?”
    “I’m making the meetings when I can,” Cotton said. “I’ve had no luck with finding a sponsor, though. Your fault,” he told her. “Big shoes to fill,” he said and he waited to hear her laugh her big, brassy laugh, but she didn’t laugh, no.
    She said, “You worry me.” She said he was playing a mind game, that she’d played plenty of them herself. She was starting to piss him off and he told her that. She interrupted him like she didn’t care about his feelings. “Tell me, is this what you went there to do?” She sounded about half sarcastic.
    “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
    “I thought you intended to tell the truth. I thought you were interested in making amends to these folks, but it sounds like the agenda has changed. Like you think there’s some way around the hard part.”
    “The hard part--”
    “It’s called taking responsibility, Cotton. I mean, c’mon, can you honestly say you’re handling the situation? You need to go to the police, tell them what happened and face the consequences. It needs to be over, for everyone’s sake, before someone gets hurt worse than what’s already happened.”
    Maybe it was the depth of Anita’s concern that got to him, or his regret at being the cause, he didn’t know, but whatever it was, Cotton was suddenly furious. “Okay,” he agreed, “fine. I’ll get it over tonight. Is that what you want? I’ll go see Latimer right now and tell him who I am.”
    “Not Latimer, no, Cotton--”
    “But you just said it needs to be over. Isn’t that what you said?” He was pacing, working himself up on purpose; he could feel it. He didn’t know why. He found the overhead light switch, flipped it on and watched a cockroach skitter under the baseboard. He thought how sick he was of living in shitholes; he thought how nuts he felt. He said, “You’re right, Nita, I need to get this over with.”
    “Maybe you should wait, huh? Until tomorrow. Go see the sheriff in the county where you had the accident-- Cotton? Are you listening?”
    “Yeah, sure,” he said. “See the sheriff. I have to go, Nita. Thanks for being there. Okay?” Cotton tossed the cell phone onto the bed; he grabbed the keys to the Mercedes. He could still hear her shouting his name when he left.
    #
    He was headed to his car, parked down the block, but his steps lagged when he got close to Smitty’s. The bar was packed. Somebody had wedged open the door and a jabber of conversation sanded the night air. He could go in there and buy himself a shot, be somebody, belong somewhere. He could order drinks on the house and be a hero.
    Cotton hunched his shoulders and kept walking. He slid behind the wheel of the Mercedes and drove away from the curb. He really thought he was going to Dove Lake to the Latimer’s, but he never made it. Instead he went back to the scene where the accident occurred.
    The intersection.
    He had to see it