“You have your mom, though, right?” I ask, even though I shouldn’t give a fuck if she has someone or no one. It doesn’t matter. Nothing about her matters. She’s something to take the brunt of my rage when I need to destroy something beautiful. That’s all. It’s all she can ever be.
She snorts and turns toward the window. “Yeah. Sure.”
I don’t push for more. I know better than anyone that parents and even siblings aren’t always there when you need them. Sometimes, they disappear without a trace. They blow you off. They move on with their lives. They only care when there’s something in it for them.
“I see your shitty mom,” I say, glancing over at her. “And I raise you one dead sister.”
Surprise flashes across her face, and then she laughs. She fucking laughs. It about does me in, that throaty, genuine laugh from this tough-as-nails, pain-in-the-ass, don’t-need-anyone bitch. I should pull over and strangle the life out of her for that, but as I adjust my grip on the wheel, I realize that I’m not pissed. Somehow, I’m calmer, the rage sinking back to the usual simmering level. I don’t know how she did it. I even crack a little smile.
I don’t know how she got me to talk about Crystal, either. It’s still raw as a pulled tooth to mention her, even after two years. In those two years, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard her name. People tiptoe around it, like if they mention it, I might remember that yeah, I once had a sister. Like I could forget. Like it’s not always there, her absence like a tumor pressing against my lungs, so I can never breathe again, not the way I used to.
I’ve never talked about it to anyone, either. What would I say? That I disowned her and told her she was dead to me, and then she was. That those were the last words I ever said to her. That if she could see me now, she’d be disgusted and devastated by the person I’ve become. No one needs to hear that shit, and there’s nothing else to say.
Though I should keep going until I reach the exit that leads to the shitty, derelict part of Faulkner where Harper lives, I pull off the highway on the exit to the winding road toward our neighborhood. I don’t want her hearing the shit I have to say to Dad, but I also don’t want to waste another thirty minutes. This needs to be said now. She can wait in the car.
After a long silence, she shakes her head. “Damn. I can’t beat that. All I’ve got left in my hand is a dad I’ve never met.”
“I wish I’d never met my dad.”
Another silence falls.
“What was she like?” she asks quietly.
That’s her fucking question. She could have asked where I’m taking her or demanded a ride home. But she wants to know about Crystal.
And I want to know why.
When I look over, she’s staring straight ahead, working over her split lip with her tongue. I watch her wet, pink tongue teasing the ragged, bloody cut and my cock throbs in my jeans, and I almost miss a curve and run off the fucking road. Taking her to my house is a real fucking bad idea.
I jerk the car straight and check to make sure she didn’t notice. She didn’t.
“She was… Everything,” I hear myself saying.
“Was she a lot like you?”
“A monster?”
“Your words, not mine.”
“No,” I say quietly. “She wasn’t like me.”
I wait for her to say she’s sorry, the way everyone does when they hear I have a dead sister. But she doesn’t say anything. She’s still tonguing the slit on her lip like it’s a fucking cunt.
Instinctually, I know this is my only chance, the one time I’ll allow myself, the one time anyone else will allow me. I have no right to say her name after what I said to her last. I took her family, her name, and I told her it was no longer hers. What right do I have to speak it now?
Once we leave this car, reality will slam us back to being what we are—enemies.
So I try to think of something to say, letting my foot up on the gas a little to make it last longer, to keep the illusion just a few more seconds. But everything I could say to describe Crystal would take longer than we have or sound cliché as hell—that she was soft but strong, innocent but smart, giving but selfish, eager to please but defiant, clever but gullible.
Before I’ve found something real to say, we’re at the gate to our neighborhood. “She was… A contradiction,” I say, hitting the gate code.
“Most women are,” Harper says simply.
I don’t say anything as we pull onto the white gravel road through the neighborhood. I hate that she makes me think of her as a woman, as human, as someone whose life is as complex—as important—as my sister’s. Seeing the burnt rubble of Devlin’s house after Duke’s latest fire and the gaudy antebellum monstrosity that Dad bought brings reality back like a slap. We didn’t even get to climb out of the car before it hit.
“Stay in the car,” I say. “I’ll take you home in a minute.”
She gives me a look. “You know me better than that.”