Keep Them Close(50)

“Okay.” I lay it on the small table by the door. “Anything else?”

“One thing,” she says, removing her gloves.

She slaps me across the face.

“Hey!” I touch my cheek. “What the fuck?”

She shoves me backward. “My shopping bag? My lipstick?”

Oh. So the test results did come back. She knows. Good. I’m tired of playing dumb, pretending I didn’t know, waiting to see if she’d do the right thing.

Now, finally, we can both stop pretending.

“Kinda the pot calling the kettle black, yeah?” I say.

Allison allows a begrudging nod. “You have video, I assume?”

“Of course. There was a camera in that beat-up junction box right by her alley door. You must have missed it.”

“What, she had a motion sensor on the camera? She got an alert on her phone?”

“Exactly,” I say. “That alley’s a dead end, so she doesn’t get many alerts. Imagine her surprise when she saw you on the camera, getting inside the trunk of her car.”

Allison shoves her hands in her long coat and looks away, as if scolded, the kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “She was fucking my husband.”

“Bullshit.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “Not bullshit. I saw them together.”

“What, walking together? Not sleeping together. I’d never believe that.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. You’re not only disloyal. You’re blind, too.”

“Disloyal? We literally did the same thing to you that you did to us, girl.”

“To Trinity!” she hisses. “I did it to Trinity, not you. But you attacked me!”

“Just…you completely started this, okay?” I say, not taking the bait. “Spare me the outrage.”

She pauses, then removes her hands from her pockets. She steps closer, directing a finger at me, her face coloring. “This was Trinity’s idea, wasn’t it? Yeah.” She warms to the notion. “It was her idea to steal one of my shopping bags and toss the Oxy pills inside it. Her idea to steal a tube of my lipstick. This was all Trinity. You don’t have it in you—”

“I don’t owe you an explanation,” I say. “I don’t owe you shit!”

“Well, that answers my question right—”

“No, it doesn’t—”

“Yes, it does. Once again, she talks you into—”

“What’s with this Trinity-manipulating-me bullshit, like I can’t think for myself? It was my idea!” I shout, patting my chest. “I did it. I took your shopping bag and lipstick. I put the pills inside. I drove the car. Trinity didn’t even want me to do it. You—you think you can run around doing whatever you want? Fuck with people’s lives? And nobody gets to punch back? Well, I punched back. And now you’re…” I drop my hands on my hips and let out a breath. “Now you’re fucked. Forensic evidence? Video? Let’s see you talk your way out of this.”

Allison, who crossed her arms during my diatribe, holds a long stare on me, her head cocked to one side. Her eyes are cold and steady. But she remains calm. Calmer than I expected. Calmer than I want.

“Feel better?” she asks.

“I don’t feel anything,” I say. “Not for you. Not anymore. I’m done with you.” I draw a line in the air. “So fucking done.”

Hurt flashes across her eyes. I hit her harder than she expected. But she’s in battle mode. I know that version of Allison. She will not crack. Not here. Not now.

She finally breaks eye contact, rolls her tongue inside her cheek. Then she steps closer to me, leans into my ear.

“Don’t be so sure,” she whispers.

She turns and heads for the door.





41


Allison

On my drive to the office, my hands are shaking. I’m ready for whatever Luke can bring. I already have a counterpunch. That’s not the problem. It’s his words to me. They hit me harder than I want to admit.

Life has taught me to keep my face impassive when lawyers screamed at me across courtroom tables, when witnesses quarreled with me or hit me with surprise testimony, when men belittled my accomplishments or talent, when Mommy Dearest told me I was an overweight disappointment. It taught me how to turn outrage or fear or abject sorrow into argument and reason and unrelenting determination. It did not, however, teach me how to steady the part of me that is still a little girl who adores her big brother.

The boy who snuck food to me when Mom put me on one of her extreme diets. Who held Dillon Teager’s head under the water at the pool until he apologized to me for stealing my rainbow cone. Who sat on my bed one night, after I got a C+ on a sophomore comp essay, and kept me laughing with his corny jokes until I stopped crying.

I’m done with you. The words play on a loop in my head, like a verdict read aloud in a hushed courtroom. Final. Absolute.

He meant it. Or at least he thinks he did. As if our history could be wiped from the record with no notice, no appeal.

My first reaction is pure anger; how dare he walk away from the person who has always been on his side? It burns. That pain threatens to fold me, to make me softer than I need to be. For a moment, I let it.