I just shake my head. “A bottle of cheap wine is like five bucks, not fifty. You could have brought Post, Saltines, and a can of spray cheese, and I wouldn’t know the difference.”
“What’s spray cheese?” he asks, looking taken aback.
I can’t help but laugh. I snag a few crackers and make a tiny sandwich with them.
“You’re taking this really well,” he says, watching me as he twists a corkscrew into the wine cork. “You okay?”
“Totally repressing the shit out of some memories right now,” I say. “Wine me up, pardner.”
He brought actual wine glasses, which tells me he’s probably never had a picnic before in his life. Not that I have, either, but even I know people don’t usually bring glassware. After handing me a generous amount of wine, he sits down beside me.
“To letting go,” he says, tapping the glass against mine. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m getting there,” I say. “Or getting drunk. I haven’t decided yet.”
I drink the wine too fast, but I don’t care. There’s a reckless, careening feeling inside me, like I’m teetering on some edge. I’m not ready to face what’s on one side, but I know I’ll have to if I fall that way. I’m not sure I can handle it without a little alcohol to pad the landing.
“Can I ask you something,” I say, holding out my glass for a refill.
“You can ask.”
Suddenly, I remember him saying that when I asked him a question online, when he was the Silver Swan. I don’t know why that sets me more on edge. I’ve known that’s who he is for a week. He was never Mr. D. We’d barely talked before he found me.
“You were stalking me before you came out here,” I say. “You were at my house. I saw your footprints, and you talked to my neighbor. Why?”
“You saved my sister,” he says. “You told me when she was in trouble. I wanted to pay you back, but as you know, I don’t like to be seen. I was there when your electricity was shut off one day, so I paid the bill.”
“You didn’t know you were looking for me when you came out here?”
“No,” he admits. “I didn’t know what I’d find. I just knew there was something sketchy going on when Duke’s Hummer came out here and then left, and then came back. I waited it out, and then I waited until I was pretty sure they weren’t coming back, and then I started looking for whatever they’d left.”
“Wow,” I say, a shiver curling through my body when I realize how very close I came to death. It’s a miracle he looked as long as he did, that he found me way out here. It’s a testament to his hatred for the Dolces, his determination to take them down. If he had been Mr. D, he would have helped me do it last year, before they ever got to me.
“You’re like my avenging, guardian angel,” I say after a while.
He lets out a little scoff of breath. “Definitely not any kind of angel.”
“You still have the blanket, right?” I ask. “And those pictures. Do you think it would be enough, if we wanted to use them?”
“You want to get Royal arrested?”
I shake my head. “Royal didn’t do it.”
“Really?” he asks, drawing back.
“And as much as I want to get the twins thrown in jail for life, I don’t think that will help much. Monsters make monsters make monsters.”
“Then you want to go to the root cause.”
“Mr. Dolce brought them here. He made them who they are. He’s the one poisoning this town, isn’t he?”
“Since the day he moved back,” Preston agrees. “Faulkner won’t ever be the way it was, though. They’ve ruined it with their blood money. Even if we went to the police, half of them are in Tony Dolce’s pocket. He got the judges elected, and he’d probably find a way to buy off or intimidate the jurors if it even went to trial.”
“So, what can we do?”
“What they did to us,” Preston says.
“What?”