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But one day, Poppy and Daisy would find someone, and off they’d go. But not me. I’d be here with Mama indefinitely.
Daddy wouldn’t have left her alone, and neither would I.
I’d heard it said that every child is different, physically and personality-wise, and though my sisters and I were very clearly sisters, we lived up to the adage. We all possessed a healthy sense of sarcasm, but Daisy was softer, sweeter than Poppy and me. I was on the opposite end of the spectrum, too salty to be sweet. And Poppy fell somewhere in the middle, which was how she ended up the glue of our trio.
But where Daisy was just like Mama, I was the spit of my father.
As long as I could remember, it was all anyone ever said. I had the strong jaw and determined chin. I had the skeptical eyebrows and tilted smile that reminded everyone of him. I didn’t know if my expressions were genetic or learned—I spent all of my time at his elbow. He taught me everything about bees and farming flowers, showed me what hard work meant and the difference between sarcasm and being an asshole. He even let me sit in his lap to drive a few times under the promise I’d never tell Mama.
I was nine when he died. My family came unraveled, left frayed and threadbare. There was a moment at the house, on the day of his wake, that a realization dawned on me, giving me purpose.
I was just like my daddy. So I was uniquely equipped to take care of them. Just like he did.
Mama used to joke that I was the man of the house, but I wore the title with pride. I was a champion spider slayer and the mistress of fixing squeaky hinges and stuck windows. I’d lobbed off the heads of many a snake, and once, when I was twelve, I shot a coyote that’d cornered Mama outside the chicken coop.
I cried for a week over that coyote, but never where anybody could see.
I’d made every big decision in my life on what Daddy would have done. And I knew one thing for certain—he wouldn’t sell to Flexion’s well-suited goon. He wouldn’t sacrifice anything for the sake of money. And he wouldn’t leave Mama here to fend for herself alone, either.
So neither would I.
“Think Stone will be back?” Daisy asked, and I realized I’d missed part of their conversation.
“I think he was sent here to get our rights, and he won’t leave until he’s done it or we run him out of town,” Poppy answered.
And I smiled. “Then we’d better sharpen our pitchforks.”
4
Hellflowers
GRANT
I sat on the small back porch of the short-term rental, sipping terrible coffee from a mug that read Rosé All Day, wondering if my father had sent me here to set me up for failure.
This town was too far off the highway to have a hotel, and the one motel in town wasn’t fit to take my shoes off in, so here I was in a tiny studio rental off the back of Salma Hayak’s old Victorian near Main Street. No, not that Salma Hayak—this one was so old that her age was indeterminate. She was nothing but cotton fluff hair and clacking bones, but she was kind, and the sheets were clean.
Doilies saddled ancient furniture, including a television that looked to be from the 70s, complete with bunny ears connected by foil. The kitchen, which was in the same room as all the other rooms, hadn’t been updated since the fifties, nor had the bathroom—the showerhead hit me in the kisser. The bed was an iron contraption made before mattresses had standard sizes, so someone had rigged up the frame to accommodate a double mattress, which worked fine, so long as you didn’t move too quick. It’d already fallen through to the floor twice.
After a few nights in Salma’s house, driving an hour from San Antonio was looking shinier than it had at first glance.
The back porch was secluded enough, facing back to trees. We were on the edge of town—a solid two blocks off the main drag—but you’d think no one was around for miles, as quiet as it was. Besides the warbling bird in a nearby tree that thought we should all be up with him well before the sun was out.
I’d been to towns like Lindenbach plenty of times but was always surprised by the alien culture in places like this. Jo wasn’t wrong about my upbringing—I’d grown up in the DC area where my father worked for the Flexion’s East Coast offices. I attended private boys’ school in Connecticut, and though I could tie a number of sailing knots, I’d never actually sailed on my own, preferring yachts with crews and a bar to any sort of manual labor.
