“Yes, how much time is there to prepare?” Iris sits up straighter, like she’s going to whip out a notebook from the pocket of her PJs or something.
I shrug again. “Raymond could know already. He could find out in six months. It just depends on who Duane knows and how fast they can get the news to him in prison.”
I’ll be surprised if it takes more than a month, though. Duane will be determined. Raymond will be eager. They’ll probably bond with a big ol’ Ashley Bested Me party. And then Duane will tell, and Raymond will finally know, and I’ll be the thing my sister fears the most: a sitting duck.
“We can talk more about the consequences after we give our statements to the sheriff,” I say. “But before we make any plans, let’s make sure we get through tomorrow.”
We go through our story three times until we have it perfect. Wes walks into the house for a few minutes as Iris stretches out on the lounge, tucking one of the pillows under her head. When he comes back, he has a fresh hot-water bottle for her, blankets for all of us, and Iris is already half asleep. Her lashes touch the dark smudges of purple under her eyes, and I reach out and tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. She twitches under the touch and then settles, dropping off into sleep as Wes and I stretch out on either side of her.
“Sleep?” he asks me.
“No way.” The numbness is starting to set in; it’ll power me through until tomorrow. I’ll crash after I talk with the sheriff.
He hands me a bottle of water. “I told Lee I’d make you drink that.”
“Because being hydrated is going to fix things.” I take the bottle from him, setting it on my lap.
“It won’t hurt.” He shrugs.
His phone buzzes. It’s been going off every few minutes since he left the hospital with me instead of his parents.
“Him or her?”
“Her,” he says, and I feel a twinge of guilt. Mrs. Prentiss is not a bad person. She loves Wes. But she doesn’t leave the mayor, and I’ve tried hard not to resent her for it, and a lot of the time, I fail. I’ve wondered why, and I’ve raged against her in my mind shamefully, like this is her fault, when there is only one person to blame.
She’s a victim, too. A part of me understands that.
But a bigger part of me will choose her son’s well-being over hers, because someone needs to.
“Do you need to go?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. He looks down at Iris, his eyes crinkling as he smiles. “I wish I could’ve seen her throw that flaming petticoat over that asshole’s head.”
“It was amazing.”
“She’s amazing,” he says, and his eyes catch mine, suddenly serious. “You made me feel like a jerk last month when I said I thought she liked you.”
“I’m sorry.” I am. I could’ve found a better dodge around it, instead of going for the easy gaslighting.
“You could’ve told me.”
“I didn’t want to.” It’s as blunt as a butter knife, but it’s true, and it makes him lean back against a pile of the yellow cushions and laugh softly so he doesn’t wake Iris.
“I was avoiding all of it like a coward,” I continue. “I thought I could control it this time. How she found out about me. How you found out about us. I thought I could make it neat and new and . . . palatable, I guess.” I can’t look at him, and I bite the inside of the nonswollen side of my mouth before I continue. “It was childish, thinking I could make my past sound good or somehow okay. It isn’t.”
“But you are,” he says, so simply, cutting me down to the bone with three words. They shake my world even more than the three words he said when we were fifteen, when we were all broken and healing and falling at once.
Is it true, though? Am I okay? Am I good?
“I had the gun on Duane,” I say softly. “The sheriff hadn’t come yet. I could have—”
“No,” he says softly. “You couldn’t have.”
No.
I couldn’t have.
“She would have,” I say, and I don’t have to clarify it’s my mother I’m talking about. He can read between my lines in a way no one else can, because he’s the only one who knows all the stories of the girls that make me up. “She wouldn’t have hesitated. Him or her. It would’ve been easy.”
“You’re not her.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know her.”