“He loved you, though. Oh God, how he loved you,” she breathed. “He’d have grifted the moon for you. He used to set you in his lap and hold your little hands for hours, like touching you could fix anything.” Her nostalgia trailed off and the trailer was silent except for the rain. “Couldn’t get you to stop crying for weeks after he left.”
I wasn’t sure what to feel. My father had loved me, every bit as much as in my white-washed memories. And he was like me in ways Mona had never understood. But he was a thief. A con man. And he’d left us in a run-down trailer with nothing, just to save his own skin.
The brush moved easily now, but she didn’t stop.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She snorted. “When I was your age, if my mother had told me I would be anything like her, I never would have believed her. I would have laughed if she’d told me I’d be seventeen and pregnant, and that one day even my own daughter would hate me, and I would grow old alone like she did. I wanted to believe I could be different. That the direction of my life would be different.” She sighed. “No kid ever wants to believe they’ll be like their parents, Nearly. That’s something you have to come to accept on your own.”
She was worried I’d fall in love with someone like my father and give up my future like she did. But I was him. In over my head with the wrong people, too stupid to listen, too selfish to turn myself in before it was too late. So what if I went to jail? I should have gone straight to the police. Should have told them everything. If I had, maybe Kylie wouldn’t have bled out behind a Dumpster. Maybe Marcia, Posie, and Teddy would still be alive.
Mona stopped brushing and began working my hair into a tight bun, awakening the pain in my head.
“Nothing can change where we come from, Nearly. But you can change where you’re headed,” she said quietly. “That boy isn’t good enough for you. He’ll be gone before you know it.”
My chair screeched and crashed to the floor behind me. I ripped out the elastic band and threw it at my mother’s feet, unable to look her in the eyes. Unwilling to look in my own.
This wasn’t Reece’s fault.
It was mine.
? ? ? I leaned against my bedroom door. I had the mother of all psychic hangovers, and the smell of Kylie’s blood lingered in my throat.
A red light flashed on my bed.
Reece’s cell phone.
I shut my eyes, remembering the look on his face when I’d started to tell him . . . He hadn’t believed me.
I grabbed the phone and squelched down on my bed, Gena’s dress soaking through my sheets.
TXT ME WHEN U GET HOME—from REECE.
I sent a quick reply.
I’M HOME. I’M SORRY.
I’m sorry I broke my promise. I’m sorry four people are dead. I set the phone down on the bed, stripped off the cold dress, and put on my pajamas. I pulled Reece’s pendant over my head and held it. It didn’t seem right to wear it anymore. We had a deal and I blew it. And that’s all it had been . . . a deal.
I stuffed it into the pocket of my hoodie and hung it across the back of my chair. I reached under my mattress for the bag and dumped the contents on my bed. Pushing aside my father’s ring, I picked up the train ticket instead. I’d bought it using every penny I’d saved. Some days, when I thought I couldn’t stand it here one more day, I’d hold it and dream about running. Never coming back. But then I’d think of my mother. Her broken smile was a cuff around my heart and I couldn’t stomach the thought of leaving.
I stuffed everything back in the bag, then curled up under my comforter and switched off the lamp.
The phone vibrated and I sat up, squinting at the screen. Not Reece. A chill pulled up my spine, drawing the skin tight.
1 New Text from Unknown Number.
MISSED U @ THE PARTY.
IT’S JUST A NUMBERS GAME.
STICK AROUND NEXT TIME AND I’LL SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU.
38
I’d left three phone messages and way too many texts for Reece. All went unanswered. The next morning, I flipped through the local white pages directory, determined to find him. There was only one listing for Whelan. I tore out the page and took a few dollars from Mona’s tip jar and walked to the bus stop at the end of the street. It was early and the air was already brutally hot and too sticky to breathe. When I emerged from the bus in a small neighborhood of run-down townhouses, the streets were empty.
I checked the numbers on the pale green siding, and found the one in the listing. It was missing a shutter and the shades were drawn shut. The tree in front was brown and barren, and looked like it had been left to rot. A security door with heavy black bars prevented me from knocking, so I tapped hard on the window beside it. A dog barked loudly in the unit next door.
I waited and knocked again. A woman peeled back the thin curtain and peered out at me. She cracked the door just enough to poke her face through. “What do you want?”
I forgot myself, taken aback by the woman’s features, how they were so like Reece’s. She started to shut the door.
“Wait!” I threw my hand in the opening. “I’m looking for Reece Whelan.”