“Good God. Seriously?”
“The judge was up for reelection and needed someone to prove she was tough on drug crime.”
He waited.
“Mr. Al was an idiot for doing what he did, yes, but he loved us girls. And he was always kind to me. But everything good he did got lost in the chaos of Chantal’s accident. He was the convenient scapegoat, the one who prevented the ranch from having to deal with any major repercussions. I don’t know specifically how it all went down, but I do know that’s what happened. Believe it or not, in that whole world of child-welfare services, there’s a lot of money at stake. Plenty of winking and nodding and looking the other way. At least, there was back then.”
“Did you ever look him up? Try to find out what happened?”
I shook my head. “Even if I could find him, I don’t think I could face him. Not after what I did. It was my fault he went away.”
“It was his fucking fault he smoked weed with a bunch of minors,” Heath said flatly.
“Mrs. Bobbie left the ranch,” I went on. “And we were all redistributed—Omega, Shellie, Tré, and me. My new house was fine. Nice parents, sweet girls, and I was safe. Reasonably happy, I guess. And no one ever found out that Chantal’s death was my fault.”
He touched my face. Then he kissed me, tenderly. And as he did, I began to cry. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop myself. I’d finally ventured down that dark hall, pushed open the door, and told someone. The relief was enormous.
“Daphne,” he said. “Look at me.”
I did.
He held my face. “You were a child. A little girl. You couldn’t have known she was taking medication for epilepsy. And you were probably confused by the questioning about Mr. Al. Did you even understand what marijuana was?”
“I knew it was more than cigarettes that they were smoking outside the clubhouse, and I had the feeling that if Mrs. Bobbie had found out what was happening, she would have killed them. But it felt wonderful too—like a happy secret they all shared together. And I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to belong.”
I shifted on the bed. Our legs were entwined now.
“The child psychologist said if I knew anything at all about how Chantal had died and didn’t tell, I was an accessory to the crime. I didn’t know what she meant exactly, just that it sounded like Mr. Al had committed a crime, and it was possible that they could put me in jail too. I was scared. But I should’ve done the right thing. I should’ve told the truth.”
“They would’ve put you in jail. Or some hellhole of a detention. You did the smart thing.”
I sighed. “Maybe. Maybe not, I can’t know for sure. I never actually talked to a lawyer, but my understanding is, if they ruled the death a homicide, the DA could have prosecuted me as an adult. Some of these guys are known for taking a really preemptive approach with juvenile offenders. Maybe the worst they could’ve come up with was criminal negligence, but still, prison was a possibility. The fact that everybody knew I hated her. That certainly would’ve been used against me.”
“Okay, Daphne, so let’s say you wished Chantal was dead. Somewhere in your eleven-year-old brain, you understood the law of the jungle was in play—that it was either you or Chantal. So, yes, you struck first, but that doesn’t make you a criminal, it makes you a survivor.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It definitely makes me a liar.”
“Not anymore. You just told me everything.”
I swallowed, feeling something delicately reaching a balance between us. Then he smiled.
“Daphne.” He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “I want to be involved in this. I want to be with you. Everywhere you are. That’s why I am alive. The only reason.”
“You really mean that, don’t you?” I whispered.
He nodded. “And we will be safe together, no matter what we meant to do or not do. No matter what we’ve done. We will be always us.”
I bit my lip.
“Say it.”
“Always us.”
He pressed his lean body against mine, and I felt his lips on mine, his tongue in my mouth. I closed my eyes. The room was warm and dark, and I let myself relax against him. I imagined the protective armor I’d always worn falling off me, joints breaking, pieces of metal clanking to the ground. I felt the distance between us evaporating, its dense black form shrinking until there was nothing left. I watched it go—sensed it going, rather—without a shred of remorse. It was easy to let Heath come close now. An easy, beautiful, shining thing to lie next to him and be fully known.
. . . what we’ve done . . .
That’s what he had said.
Sleep started to nibble away at the edges of my consciousness. The bed felt like a boat that was rocking gently over waves. I’d forgotten to take off my earrings and ring, so I pulled them off, dropping them on the nightstand. I was drifting, drifting, drifting—back to the apartment where I lived with my mother. To the small pink room, my white-painted bed with the spindled posts and daisy-chain comforter. The purple lampshade. The little TV on the chest of drawers.
I was six or seven. Or, I don’t know, maybe I was older. Mrs. Tully, our down-the-hall neighbor, had used her extra key to let me in. She’d persuaded the super to let her cut a spare after the first half a dozen times my mother stayed out all night and Mrs. Tully had seen me boarding the school bus the next morning in the clothes I’d been wearing the previous day. Mrs. Tully unlocked the door and told me to go put on my pajamas and brush my teeth. She would gather some of my dirty clothes she could throw in her washing machine.
I heard her from the bathroom, talking in a low, urgent voice. When I came out, toothbrush sticking out of my mouth, I saw my mama hunched over the recliner. She’d dropped her purse on it, pulled off the scrunchie that had held back her yellow-blonde hair, and dragged her fingers tiredly over her scalp. She was wearing a denim miniskirt and a ruffled eyelet halter top that showed a strip of doughy skin between the two. She leaned over to shuck off her sandals—the high-heeled brown strappy ones I used to like to clomp around in. I wondered what had made her have such loose skin. It was like some of her insides had been pulled out, and left her body like a week-old balloon.
“Where have you been?” I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. After Mrs. Tully left, Mama finally noticed me standing in the hallway, the toothbrush still in my mouth.
“You want to come along next time?” she said. “I bet I could get a stack of pesos for your hot little ass.” She laughed, a loud, honking noise, and I melted back into the bathroom.
As I spat into the sink, I thought it over. Since she was high, it would be easy to push her off our second-floor apartment balcony, up and over the railing, and down to the cracked, weedy parking lot below. Maybe she would hit a car. Or crack her head on the concrete. I wondered what she would look like, dead, all that pale, flabby skin below the balcony.
And then I wondered how bad a child must be to think things like that about her own mama. Children were supposed to love their mothers, even I knew that. Good children.
Maybe I wasn’t good. Maybe I was a monster . . .