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He wiped the caked blood off his cheek and neck.
“How much of that is yours?”
“Not most of it.”
“The marines?”
He nodded.
“Devine?”
Slowly, Evan shook his head.
She slotted the transmission into drive, signaled like a law-abiding citizen, and pulled out into the murky soup.
They drove in silence.
“Thanks,” Evan said.
“It was fun.”
“I meant for watching the Seabrooks.”
Candy shrugged. “That girl is something else. Spunky.”
“Yeah,” Evan said.
“Gets it from her mother. Strong woman.”
“Yeah.”
“A strong man, too, in Mason, to help them be.”
The stink of burned rubber hit them first, and then they reached the puddled mess at Halsey Neck. Emergency services had extinguished the blaze and cleared a narrow lane through the wreckage. Candy slowed at the checkpoint, letting the automatic window purr down.
A tired cop with a coffee-stained mustache said, “Ma’am, where are you coming f—”
“This mess better be cleaned up by tomorrow.” Candy waved her hands around. Her nails had somehow in the preceding hour picked up a French manicure. “Thisentiremess. My husband comes in from Zurich at daybreak, he’s been gone for two weeks, and he will absolutely lose his shit that you allowed this to happen on your watch. We have maxed contributions to the Southampton Village Police Benevolent Associationevery single yearsince we moved here, and I must tell you—”
The cop tilted onto his heels, reverse-waddled back a few steps with as much passive-aggressiveness as he could get away with, and waved them through.
Candy snapped her head forward, the tinted window coasted up, and she drove on. They snaked north toward Route 27, tires humming across asphalt. Candy checked her rearview mirror and then checked it again.
They looked at each other and cracked up.
He wasn’t even sure why he was laughing, and he would’ve bet she didn’t know either. But she was, a big laugh he’d never seen on her. For the first time, he saw straight through Orphan V to the vulnerable girl and the brash young lady and the full-spectrum woman that she was.
She was all of them.
She was herself.
She was beautiful.
62
Root-Beer Truce
Evan lay on his back on the Seabrooks’ guest-room bed, staring at tassels.
