“Yeah,” Lo says. “That’s not herOnlyWordshandle. Maybe someone else sent it. Which of your enemies would send you something like that to fuck with you? Colt?”
That’s not a question we’re going to answer when she’s in the room.
Baron scrolls up through a dozen thumbnails she sent me this summer, none of which I watched. “Here’s a recorded clip.”
He pays up, pops the sucker in his mouth, and starts the video. He goes to work, doing his magic to dissect whatever coding is behind the video, not even watching the screen. I can’t watch, either. When I see the dick come out of the guy’s pants, I think I’m going to fucking lose my sanity.
“Turn it off,” I snap.
The minute runs out before there’s a dick in her, but it’s no better. I already saw five minutes that I can never forget. I can feel myself slipping away, under the surface where it’s calm. Baron watches me for a second, like he’s waiting to see if I’ll lose it like I did when I saw that sadistic fuck Colin coming out of our house. But I’m in control, just like he is. Duke’s too busy feeling up Gloria and dumping beer down his throat to think right now, but Baron’s sharp. He knows what this means.
“What can you tell?”
“It was filmed this summer,” he says quietly. For a minute, none of us speak. Even Duke’s finally gotten serious, his face sober as his gazes meet ours.
She’s alive.
I don’t know what I expected, something welling up inside, rage or relief, but nothing comes. I knew she was alive. Some part of me always knew. I didn’t go wander the swamp thinking I’d find her bones. I didn’t sit under the tree where we left her to mourn her each evening. Maybe some fucked up part of me was waiting for her to return, to tell me I had it all wrong or at least explain herself.
It wasn’t something rational. Of course she’s not going to go back to the place we tried to kill her. She’s not me. But some unconscious part of my mind must have been waiting for that. An explanation as to how she could do that. How she could have fooled me so hard. Something to convince me she wasn’t like all the other Darlings.
But she is. She played me, she took her punishment, and she moved on with some other guy. And now, she’s trying to destroy me for what I did to her. She knows me so well that she knows even after what I did, I can’t let her go. She knows she still has claws in me, and she’s going to make me pay until she drives me over the edge. I tried to kill her, but she’s the one who will succeed. She’ll keep going until I’m dead. Then she’ll be satisfied.
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think she filmed that,” Gloria says, looking at me with something way too fucking close to pity.
“That’s obvious. The guy is holding the phone,” Duke says, gesturing to the thumbnail left once Baron rejects the prompt to put in another thousand to keep watching.
“I meant, that’s a dude’s homemade porn,” Lo says. “Not a girl’s.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “What, you make porn now? Since when are you the expert?”
“No,” she says slowly. “Stop being a dick and I might tell you.”
I cross my arms and glare down at her. “Explain.”
“I’m just saying, a dude’s going to get all up close and personal with the act of penetration. Like that.” She gestures to the screen. “If it was Harper trying to make you eat your heart out, she’d give you something less crude than a closeup shot of her lady business. She’d give you her face, some inviting smiles or come-hither looks. She’d drive you crazy, make you wonder if she’d go through with it before she got to the killing blow. She’d want you to see her face when he put it in.”
“Dude, you’re evil,” Duke says, pushing her away.
Gloria grins like he just gave her the highest compliment and takes a swig of beer.
“There’s plenty of tease in the live video,” I say. “He’s rubbing his dick all over her. And she’d never show her face. She’s more obsessed with college than you are.”
“I stand by my reasoning,” she says. “Even if she wasn’t showing her face, she’d still tease. She’d undress for the camera, touch herself, let you see her climbing on the dude. This is just fucking.”
“That’s the good stuff,” Duke points out.
“See?” Gloria gestures to him, widening her eyes at me. “I rest my case.”
“Or maybe she’s not making porn for you, Lo,” Baron argues. “Maybe she’s a pro and knows what guys like.”
“Hm, I doubt it,” Gloria says. “I mean, I suppose it’s possible. But I’m willing to bet a guy is behind that screen name.”
“You need to leave,” I say.
She’s probably right, but I need to talk to my brothers now, figure out a game plan. I know what they’ll say already, though. The problem was taken care of. She didn’t die, but she kept her mouth shut. It doesn’t matter where she is or what happened to her as long as she didn’t go to the cops or make trouble for our family. It’s fine. She disappeared just like Mabel. She’s gone. That’s what we wanted, after all.
“Walk me home,” Lo says. “And I’ll go quietly.”