Lena raised an eyebrow at her cousin. “You slept in a car?”
Rid tossed her blond and pink hair. “I couldn’t leave Shrinky Dink alone. It’s not like he was a hybrid back then.”
Link wiped his greasy hands on his Iron Maiden T-shirt. “You know you love me, Rid. Admit it.”
Ridley pretended to scoot away from him, but she barely moved an inch. “I’m a Siren, in case you’ve forgotten. I don’t love anything.”
Link kissed her on the cheek. “Except me.”
“You got room for two more?” John was balancing a tray of freezes and french fries in one hand, his other hand locked around Liv’s.
Lena smiled at Liv and moved over. “Always.”
There was a time when I couldn’t get the two of them to stand in the same room. But that felt like a lifetime ago. Technically, for me, I guess it was.
Liv tucked herself under John’s arm. She was wearing her periodic table shirt and her trademark blond braids. “I hope you don’t think we’re sharing those.” She slid the paper boat full of chili fries in front of her.
“I would never get between you and your fries, Olivia.” John leaned over and gave her a quick kiss.
“Smart boy.” Liv looked happy—not make-the-best-of-it happy but the real kind of happy. And I was happy for both of them.
Charlotte Chase called out from behind the counter; looked like her summer job had turned into a year-round after-school job. “Anybody wanna slice a pecan pie? Fresh outta the oven?” She held up the sad-looking boxed pie. It wasn’t fresh out of anybody’s oven, not even Sara Lee’s.
“No, thanks,” Lena said.
Link was still staring at the pie. “Bet it’s not good enough to be Amma’s worst pecan pie.” He missed Amma, too. I could tell. She had always been on him about one thing or another, but she loved Link. And he knew it. Amma let him get away with things I never could, which reminded me of something.
“Link, what did you do in my basement when you were nine years old?” To this day, Link had never told me what Amma had on him. I had always wanted to know, but it was the one secret I’d never been able to get out of him.
Link squirmed in his seat. “Come on, man. Some things are private.”
Ridley looked at him suspiciously. “Is that when you got into the schnapps and puked everywhere?”
He shook his head. “Naw. That was someone else’s basement.” He shrugged. “Hey, there’s a whole lotta basements around here.”
We were all staring at him.
“Fine.” He ran his hand over his spiky hair nervously. “She caught me…” He hesitated. “She caught me dressed up—”
“Dressed up?” I didn’t even want to think about what that meant.
Link rubbed his face, embarrassed. “It was awful, dude. And if my mom ever found out, she’d kill you for sayin’ it and me for doin’ it.”
“What were you wearing?” Lena asked. “A dress? High heels?”
He shook his head. His face was turning red with shame. “Worse.”
Ridley whacked him on the arm, looking pretty nervous herself. “Spill. What the hell did you have on?”
Link hung his head. “A Union soldier’s uniform. I stole it from Jimmy Weeks’ garage.”
I burst out laughing, and within seconds so did Link. No one else at the table understood the sin in a Southern boy—with a father who led the Confederate Cavalry in the Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill, and a mother who was a proud member of the Sisters of the Confederacy—trying on a Civil War uniform for the opposing side. You had to be from Gatlin.
It was one of those unspoken truths, like you don’t make a pie for the Wates because it won’t be better than Amma’s; you don’t sit in front of Sissy Honeycutt in church because she talks the whole time right along with the preacher; and you don’t choose the paint color for your house without consulting Mrs. Lincoln, not unless your name happens to be Lila Evers Wate.
Gatlin was like that.
It was family, all of it and all of them—the good parts and the bad.