Page 5

I raised my eyebrow.

“Fine, you got here fast,” she admitted. Zoe smiled as Pearl dropped off coffee, OJ, biscuits, butter, and blackberry preserves.

“What do you want for breakfast?” Pearl asked.

“I’ll have the lumberjack, eggs over easy,” I said.

“The biscuits are enough.” Zoe smiled up at Pearl.

“I’ll get you an omelet,” Pearl told her as she picked up the menus. “No green peppers, right?”

Zoe sighed, then nodded. “Thanks, Pearl.”

“It’s going to be all right,” Pearl said as she patted Zoe’s hand. Then she walked away from the booth.

“I can’t believe I hadn’t heard about all of this until you called me the day before yesterday,” I said staring at Zoe.

“I know, the Averys are infamous again. Isn’t it great?” She had that fake Avery smile, her tone bright with sarcasm, but her hand trembled slightly as she slathered the preserves on her biscuit.

“Cut the shit. I googled everything and then called my parents. What I didn’t find out online they filled me in from the rumor mill that they’re still plugged into. For fuck’s sake, why didn’t anyone tell me what in the hell had been going on?”

“Hello? You were studying. You were finishing all your certifications so that you could be a firetruck driver.”

“Driver/Operator,” I corrected.

“Yeah, that. We didn’t want to do anything to break your concentration.”

I slapped my fist down on the Formica tabletop. “Evie was almost killed in Turkey, then Chloe was held hostage and beaten in a cabin at Cherokee Lake. What the fuck, Zoe? Don’t you think I should have been clued in sooner than Tuesday?”

She covered my fist with both of her hands, attempting to soothe me.

“The stuff with Evie happened so fast, and then those guys came out of nowhere. We had no idea.”

“That went down three months ago, and you just told me now.

“No wonder Chloe blew off my last seven Skype calls. When I reached out to you, you ignored me. Now her I get, but why you?”

She turned away from me, but not before I saw a sheen of tears. “This was a family thing.”

“I’m family. You always said I was part of the family,” I protested.

“During the good times. Not during the Avery bullshit. That’s private. You’re a golden boy—we never wanted you to see the dirt,” her voice broke as she looked back at me. “Not the real slime.”

I looked at her and realized she was serious. Life shifted on its axis once again. “Really, that’s how you saw me? Someone who couldn’t handle ugly?”

Her expression turned to regret, and she gripped my hand even tighter. “No, that’s not it at all. There was never any doubt that you could handle ugly. Never, Zarek. We just didn’t want you to see it. We didn’t want anyone to see it.”

“Well, you did a piss poor job of hiding it. I saw it. Even when we were kids, I saw it.”

“Well sure, the whole county knew we were white trash.” Her tone bled twenty years of bitterness.

I reached across the booth and tucked my knuckles under her chin. “Never that. You girls were, and are, amazing. Look at the way people immediately call out to you—they care. They’ve always cared.”

She ducked her head down and plucked at the biscuit. “They wouldn’t care, not really. Not if they’d if they’d known what Mom was like. Uncle Huey,” her lip trembled.

“I knew. My parents knew. Your teachers knew. They did everything possible to make sure you girls caught breaks. Think about the job that allowed your sister Trenda to work from home after she gave birth. That was my dad and Brad Phillips who arranged that.”

Her head jerked up. “Brad? But his wife hated my mom.”