Dear Daughter (20 page)

I curled myself around the growing ache in my stomach, a mousy pill bug who’d been poked.

This is how Leo found me, ten minutes later—not, of course, that he was looking at me. He was looking at the same thing Peter and everybody else was: Rue.

Typical.

“Hey, Rue,” he said. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

Rue glanced down at the silver flask that had made its way around the circle to her. Then she put it behind her back and angled her body so her pretty knees pointed at Leo.

“Leo, baby,” she said.

Leo stepped back and looked up at the ceiling. “Rue—
actual
baby.”

“Don’t be like that,” she said—and I’ll give her this, she pouted magnificently. Everything else, though, was strictly bad regional theater.

Leo sighed. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “You’re going to give me that flask, and then—because never let it be said I’m not a gentleman—I’m going to go fetch you something else to drink. And when I come back, we can forget that this ever happened. So, what do you say? Would you like a Coke—or a Diet Coke?”

Rue curled a lock of hair around one finger. “How about a bourbon. Neat.”

“Don’t push me, Rue.”

Rue chewed a cocktail stirrer in the ostentatiously lascivious way of a girl who’s just discovered blow jobs. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and yell at her, “Play coy, already!”

“Come on,” Rue said. “What my dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

Leo plucked the stirrer from her mouth and tossed it on the table. “I don’t think you know your father like I do.” He held out his hand. “Give it here.”

“Whatever.” She slapped the flask into his hand and turned back to her friends.

“Always a pleasure, Rue,” he said, slipping the flask into his pocket. As his gaze slid my way, something in his expression changed, like a snake when it sheds its skin.

“What?” I said under my breath. “
I’m
legal.”

“Funny you should say that,” he said. He grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. “Walk with me.”

Before I could protest, he’d pulled me halfway across the room, past Kelley’s wide, searching eyes. I smiled at her as breezily as I could, as if it was a totally ordinary everyday thing to be manhandled by an officer of the law—which, of course, for me it was. Leo hustled me through a door marked
Private
and closed it firmly behind us.

“You could’ve just asked nicely,” I said, rubbing my shoulder.

“Would that have worked?”

I turned away.

The room was cramped and windowless, lined with wood paneling that had been painted off-white in an unsuccessful attempt to brighten the place up. Most of the space was taken up by a metal desk with a laminate top. The light was the yellow-green of piss in pea soup, and it flickered irregularly. A moth was trapped between the fixture’s glass globe and its bulb.

I perched on the desk and left the chair for Leo. Higher ground and all.

He twisted open the flask he’d taken from Rue and held it up. “Want some?”

“What is it?”

He took a drink and grimaced. “Strong.”

“I think I’m okay.”

He screwed the cap back on and set it on the desk next to me. “In case you change your mind,” he said. “So what were you and Rue talking about?”

“The usual. Boys. Bras. Menstruation.”

My left leg started swinging of its own accord, something I used to do to draw attention to my ankles back when I wore pencil skirts and skyscraper heels. And Leo’s attention was drawn, all right. But his mouth didn’t look restless with interest; it looked sour, as if he’d just sucked on a lemon—and intent, as if he knew he still had thirty lemons left to go.

I suppose there probably wasn’t anything nice about my rickety old ankles anymore anyway. Not that you could really even tell under the thick cuffs of polyester. My slacks didn’t have legs so much as logs.

But still, my foot banged against the desk—
thump thump thump
—until Leo’s hand shot out and grabbed my leg just below my knee. I tried to pretend I was an amputee, that the feeling of his hand on my shin was just a phantom pain, not something that was actually happening. Because if it
was
actually happening, it was the first time my leg had been touched in a long, long time—even if his touch was as intimate as that of a Bulgarian aesthetician applying a last layer of wax to a client’s asshole.

“I want my picture back,” he said.

“What picture?”

“Don’t turn dumb on me now.” He adjusted his hand and something pinged all the way down to my heel. I tried to pull away, but he held me tight.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll drop it off tomorrow.”

“Good.”

“Glad we’ve cleared that up.”

“Me too.”

I glanced at the door, taking some comfort in the fact that Leo hadn’t locked it, even though I was sure he’d considered it. Thank God Kelley had seen us on our way in. If I died in here, at least someone would find my body.

“So is that it? Am I free to leave?”

His fingers clenched and he drew in a portentous breath I knew didn’t bode well. “No,” he said. “You can’t go until you explain how, exactly, you came into possession of a stolen truck—with stolen plates.”

I stifled a groan of dismay. Now I was going to have to find another car. And hide the old one.

“I should also mention that knowingly transporting stolen goods across state lines is a federal crime.”

I rolled my eyes. “Only if said goods are worth more than five grand, which we both know isn’t even remotely the case. But nice try.”

“Luckily, I’m pretty sure grand theft auto is still in play.”

I watched him closely, wondering whether whatever he’d been up to with the sunken-eyed pothead was worse than grand theft auto. The fact that he hadn’t already taken me in gave me hope.

“So arrest me, then,” I said.

His eyebrows went up. “That’s all you have to say?”

I relaxed. He was just fishing. I was safe for now.

“No, there is one more thing,” I said. “Get your fucking hand off my leg.”

He did, but he didn’t retreat, he didn’t fall back in his chair and cross his arms in frustration like I’d hoped. Instead he stood up and put his hand flat on the desk, the tip of his thumb brushing my hip. I recognized it as an intimidation tactic—and goddammit, it was working. Anxiety was scraping the pulp from my skin.

“I’m going to ask one more time: Why are you here?”

“For the history.”

“Lies.” His breath smelled, not unpleasantly, of stale mouthwash and Marlboro Reds.

“Why do you care, anyway?”

“I have a rule: Never trust a pretty girl.”

“Good thing I’m not pretty.”

“More lies.”

He leaned toward me, and I hate to say that I leaned forward, too. But then, just when I was sure his lips were about to do something to mine—and just when I was almost sure I was about to let them—his free hand came around the back of my head, seizing the hair at the base of my neck. He tilted my skull to the side, and he wasn’t gentle about it. My whole head felt hot and foggy, like when your missed medication finally catches up with you.

I wrenched myself from his grasp and turned my face to his. His expression was so smooth, so even, so clear, not like ice or glass or still standing water but more like the night sky when you can’t see any stars, when you find yourself swamped with desperately unproductive thoughts like
What comes after infinity?
I had no idea what I was supposed to say.

He put his mouth next to my ear. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s only a matter of time before I figure it out.” Then he gave me one last look and left the room. I stayed on the desk for some minutes after, trying to figure out if I was glad he was gone.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I slipped out of the church and walked down the street to the Coyote Hole. It was time to deal with Kayla’s truck. I’d seen an old barn in Adeline where I thought I could hide the thing, but I couldn’t go driving there while so many people were heading home from the potluck. I didn’t want to wait in my room, either: I’d spend six hours compulsively checking the locks and the light switches and the windows and the power sockets and the closet and the shower and the ever-malignant void beneath my bed until, with luck, my body finally gave out on me. And that was the best-case scenario.

The Coyote Hole was my only remaining option.

I ordered a soda water and found an empty stool between a roly-poly man in a blue plaid shirt and a woman in low-rise jeans whose meaty ass crack was visible to the entire bar. I took great pleasure in sitting there—my body felt so light as I sat between them, like I’d just landed on Venus and was enjoying the weaker gravity.

A drunken giggle as sweet as a fart in a wet swimsuit sounded in my right ear. I looked over to see the woman next to me making eyes at some guy at the other end of the bar.

“Well, if it isn’t Mitchell Percy,” she said.

I twisted around to look at Stanton’s son. He had none of his father’s old-fashioned elegance: Mitch’s good looks were thoroughly nouveau riche, from his oversized dive watch to his Just for Men hair. He wore the khaki pants and polo shirt of the kind of man who’d carry your groceries out to your car before sexually assaulting you. Every time he shook someone’s hand, a part of him probably mourned the fist bump that might have been.

The woman next to me straightened, hauling up another inch of marbled fat from beneath her waistband. “So what’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?” she said. She clearly thought her tone was flirtatious, but she sounded like a little girl talking to her woobie.

Mitch smiled, his bleached teeth blue in the low light of the bar. “There’s nothing nice about me, sugar.”

“We missed you at the potluck tonight.”

“And I sure missed being there.”

I reconsidered the woman. She wasn’t
that
bad, I decided. Her shirt was so low cut I could see the stretch marks on the tops of her breasts, but unlike me, at least she
had
breasts. And she wasn’t really fat. She was just thin enough to let you know she gave a shit, like she probably shaved her bush every once in a while, but she wasn’t so thin that she could be exacting about things like coming during sex. She was a lazy man’s woman. A rainy day in the dark kind of woman.

I sipped my soda water and pretended to watch the game. The one on TV, I mean.

“I made my famous peach pie,” the woman was saying. “But lucky you, I’ve got another one waiting at home. I could heat it up in no time.”

“Sorry, sweetheart,” said Mitch, and another person might have believed he meant it. “The wife’s on me to watch my weight.”

She lifted her glass to him. “Well, if you ever change your mind, you let me know.”

“You know I will.”

The woman puffed out a little breath of hoppy air before squaring her shoulders and calling over another drink order to Tanner. Only I saw the disgust that bloomed through Mitch’s face as soon as she turned away. It dimpled up in the soft cartilage on the end of his chin, unfurled around his mouth, tugged at his gaping nostrils. He threw a few bills on the bar and left.

The woman caught my eye out of the corner of hers and gave me a rueful smile that glimmered with far more intelligence than I would have expected. “Girl’s gotta put herself out there, you know?” She held out a surprisingly delicate hand. “I’m Crystal,” she said.

“Rebecca,” I said.

“Here for Gold Digger Days—? Oh, why even ask. Of course you are.”

I nodded. “Nice to meet you, too.”

Tanner delivered her drink, which she attacked with gusto. I took the opportunity to get a closer look at the skin on her neck, a reasonably reliable way to gauge a person’s age in a world with low-cost plastic surgery. I figured she was in her early forties, give or take—how old my mother actually would have been if she were still alive.

(I still couldn’t believe that my mother had pretended to be ten years
older
than she really was. That was dedication.)

I turned back to Crystal. “So what’s with you and that guy?” I asked, jerking my head toward the end of the bar.

“You mean Mitch?”

I nodded.

“Oh, nothing much. We went to high school together. I guess I’ve had a thing for him ever since.”

“I can see why.” And I guess that was true. The singles scene in Ardelle was probably pretty grim.

“I mean, he’s still cute,” Crystal said, “but back then, oh man. He was all freckles and muscles and hair. Like he belonged on a poster. There was a time when I thought that maybe—but, well, I guess I was with Darren already anyway, and then before I could ever do anything about it, I was having his baby.” She took a long drink. “Timing never was my thing.”

But there was something in the slump of Crystal’s shoulders that told a different story. After almost thirty years with nothing to show for it, most people would’ve given up. She was genuinely disappointed, though, which made me think that once upon a time she’d been genuinely encouraged. I bet that one night she got down with Mitch Percy, and then afterward he never acknowledged it had happened. That was just the way of things with girls like her and guys like him. And even if she wanted to shout to the world that, no, she was a different kind of girl, in fact she was the
exact opposite
kind of girl, because she was the one he’d once really wanted, what could she do? The only other party to what happened didn’t care for the truth. She lived in flickering gaslight everyone around her claimed was constant.

“Well, it’s his loss,” I said after a moment.

Crystal turned to me, surprised. “Thanks. So . . . do you have any great teenage loves who got away?”

Like I’d love a teenager. Blech.

“Oh no,” I said. “I never even went to prom.”

She put her hand on my arm. “Maybe that was for the best,” she said. “I went to prom with Darren, and look how that turned out.”

I waved at Tanner, gesturing for another soda water, wishing desperately I was asking for something else. He caught my eye and then, very deliberately, looked the other way. Dick.