“You don’t think they’d have found him by now if they could?”
“I think their thirst for revenge goes deeper than their ability to love,” Preston says.
I nod, watching the dragonflies in the lazy morning sun as we sit in companionable silence. He doesn’t know those boys like I do. I owe them no loyalty, but I know how much they loved their sister. So much that it destroyed them, all of them, in a way.
And maybe all of Faulkner, too.
twenty-eight
Harper Apple
“Mom, can we talk?” I ask that evening. I stand in her bedroom doorway as she hunts through her closet.
“Not now,” she says. “I’ve got a party to get to. Retirement suits me, don’t you think?”
She holds up a skimpy dress that will make her look as wide as a billboard. It’s not like we can afford clothes that flatter us. If she could fit into the ones Preston got me, she’d do it, but even if she could, they’d look just as bad on her as the cheap ones, since we’re not the same shape.
I shrug. “It’ll just take a minute.”
“Well, go on, then,” she says, peeling off the black V-neck withBabywritten in curling, rhinestone letters on the front. “You can tell me while I get dressed.”
“The other day, you said something about JT Darling,” I remind her. “But then you acted like you were talking about somebody else.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Who were you talking about?”
“What’s that matter?” she asks, peeling off her jeans and tossing them onto the bed.
I know I won’t get anywhere without giving her something, and even though I know she’s a greedy bitch, if there’s one thing she’ll respond to, it’s a name drop.
“I just… The guy I’ve been seeing for the past six months is a Darling, and I just wanted to know your exact history with them. For obvious reasons.”
She turns to me, trying to hold back a laugh that bursts out in mean little volleys. Finally, she throws back her head and laughs out loud, reaching to brace her hand on the wobbly bureau. “You think you might be a Darling?” she asks at last, wiping her eyes. “Girl, don’t you think I would have gotten something better than a baby I didn’t want out of that deal?”
I give her a tight smile. “That’s what I thought.”
“Hand me a cigarette, will you?” she asks, shimmying into the tight black dress.
I sigh and hand her the pack from the table near her bed. “Would you tell me what happened, anyway?”
“Not much to tell,” she says, smoothing her hands over her body as she turns sideways to the mirror and sucks her stomach in. “I had a chance with them, maybe, but you came along and fucked all that up.”
“Of course,” I mutter. “Story of my life.”
“Story ofmylife,” she says, stopping to light a cigarette.
“So tell me,” I say. “Tell me the story of your life so I can be sorry for ruining it.”
“Don’t get smart with me.”
“Sorry,” I say. “Please, Mom, can you tell me about the Darlings and who my dad really is, so I don’t have to be worried I slept with my cousin.”
She cackles and sets her cigarette down, reaching up her dress to pull her underwear off. “You got one thing right,” she says, digging through her drawer for a new pair. “Everything changed when JT moved in the trailer park. He wasn’t like the other boys down there. You could tell he didn’t belong from the start. And the way he looked… whoo-boy, he was a hottie.”
“I believe it,” I mutter.
“Course I was still living with your nana and papa back then,” she says, working her way into a thong before pulling her dress back down. “Daddy didn’t like him much, but he charmed the pants off Mama and all the rest of the women down there.”