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Margot eyed her. “It also wouldn’t kill you to leave Bonne Terre.”
“I’d like to go to Baton Rouge,” Katie said, her eyes bright with the prospect. Katie hadn’t been out of the parish since she was a year and a half and Tyler had paid for tickets for the two of us to go to Vegas. Baton Rouge was like going to Mars.
“They can come here,” I said, closed up tight against the idea of going to them, the deserters. “This is their home.”
Margot shook her head. “Not to them, it isn’t.” I didn’t say anything. I knew what Margot was trying to do, but this was our home. The home we made after Mom left us here. The home that kept us safe, protected. Together.
Until they left it.
“I don’t understand why you take it as a personal betrayal that they left.” Margot sighed. “Or why you think this house will fall down if you go. I asked you to come to Las Vegas last year. And last month, in China, Anthony would have been delighted to have you—”
“Right, I’m going on a trip with you and your boyfriend.”
“Just friend, honey.” Margot smoothed back white hair from her forehead. “Boyfriends are for children.”
This conversation was slipping from uncomfortable to ridiculous.
“I have to get some work done,” I said and stood, freeing myself. Margot had been obsessed lately with my lack of travel. Like I should take off every few months for foreign lands the way Margot did.
I wasn’t that kind of person. Foreign lands were not for me.
“Honey?” Margot asked. “You don’t suppose Matt was right, do you?”
“About what?”
“About Vanessa hiding the gems here?”
I swung incredulous eyes to my grandmother. “Do you?”
Margot pursed her lips. “I guess not.”
“There are no gems in this house.” I laughed. “Please. We would know. I would know. How would she get in and out without me knowing it?”
“But the break-ins?”
“High schoolers,” I said. “Just like it’s always been.”
MATT
I heaved down another square of sod, lining up the edges.
Don’t. Think.
Don’t. Think.
Bugs swarmed. Sun burned.
Don’t. Think.
Not about my father.
The accident.
Savannah in the moonlight.
Don’t. Think.
My world was reduced to the stretch and pull of my muscles, the river of sweat down my back.
He didn’t look up. Didn’t stop.
The files were gone, my obsession over my father’s setup deflated with one sharp, wounded look from Savannah.
I can fix it.
What a joke. I couldn’t fix anything. Shouldn’t even try.
Something orange was flung into my eyes and I looked up to see Katie scowling at me from a low tree branch. She lifted her hand and hurled the peeled orange at my chest.
The fruit was right on target and the juice and pulp exploded against my body, up into my eyes.
“We don’t want you here!” she cried, then vanished in the leaves, leaving nothing but silence and the smell of orange in the air.
Suddenly, there was a roar in my head. The artist, the girlfriend, Savannah, my father, all screaming for attention, all wanting to divide me into parcels of pain. Of regret.
Until there was nothing left of me.
I would finish this, then the ghosts could have me.
10
SAVANNAH
“Wow, look at that new greenhouse. It’s gorgeous. Seriously, your courtyard looks like a magazine spread,” Juliette said, sitting on my printer table so she could stare out the window at Matt. “That guy doesn’t stop, does he?”
“Who?” I asked, pretending to be distracted as I saved files and sent e-mails. Done. My work for Discovery was done.
“Like you don’t know,” Juliette said, grinning. She leaned over and reached into my bottom drawer for the Halloween candy I kept there.
“I don’t.” I sounded like some kind of spinster librarian. Which I was. And I was okay with it. After the initial shock and anger of finding out about Matt, I’d actually started to grieve a little. Not that I was in love, but, for the first time in a long time, it felt possible.
And that didn’t happen in Bonne Terre very often. Not for me.
But I was over it. A week after Matt had been revealed as a fraud, I was my old self again.
“I still don’t understand why you let him stay. I thought you were going to run him out of town for sure.”
“Not my call, sadly,” I said.
Juliette snorted, speaking volumes in the language between friends.
“What is your point?” I asked.
“If you really wanted him gone, he’d be gone.”
“Margot may be old, but she’s no pushover, and she wanted him to stay.” Juliette was silent, and again, the silence said plenty. “I’m serious.”
“Fine. Play that way.” Juliette shrugged and tossed a handful of candy into her mouth. She twisted on the printer table to better watch whatever Matt was doing. “He doesn’t look healthy.”
I thought the same thing, but kept my mouth shut. No way was I admitting I’d been watching him.
