AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She laughs, but not like what I said was funny. “It’s hard to be a girl again—a human girl with hands and feet and clothes and school. Hard to talk when I’m out of practice. And sometimes I feel—” She stops herself.
“Yeah?”
“Like—I don’t know. This is your brother’s funeral. We should be talking about your feelings.”
I take a long, grateful swallow of the coffee. “Honestly, that’s the last thing I want to do.”
“I can be very comforting,” she says with a small, wicked smile.
“Hey—my virtue, remember? Come on, tell me what you were going to say.”
She kicks the wall lightly with one of her shiny black pumps. I can see her big toe through the opening in the front. The nail is painted a deep shining blue. “Okay. Do you ever feel so angry that you think you could devour the whole world and still not be satisfied? Like you don’t know how to stop feeling that way and it scares you, but that just makes you angry too?”
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about my feelings,” I say, trying for lightness, because I know exactly what she means. It’s like she was speaking my own thoughts aloud.
She looks at the floor, the corner of her lip tilted up. “I’m not.”
“Yeah,” I say slowly. “Yeah.”
“Some days I just hate everything.” She looks at me earnestly.
“Me too,” I say. “Especially today. I have all of these questions that will never be answered. Like, was Philip ashamed of using me like he did? Was that why he couldn’t look me in the face all those years? But then, when the whole con was over and Anton was dead, it was him who couldn’t forgive me. We could have called it even—okay, not really even, but even enough, but it was like he couldn’t face anything he’d done and somehow I was the enemy. Like I wasn’t even human to him anymore. Like I wasn’t his brother. Why?”
I should shut up, but I don’t. I guess I wanted to talk about my feelings after all. “And now you. You were the only real friend I had for years. I mean, I had friends at school, but then Mom would mess things up or pull us out of school for some con she was running, or those friends would find out about me being from a family of workers, and that would be that. But you. There was a time when I could tell you anything—and then I thought I killed you, and now when I have you back, I can’t—You’re—She took—”
Lila leans forward swiftly. Her lips are soft on my cheek.
I close my eyes. Her breath is warm and it would only take the smallest shift of my mouth, just a slight acquiescence, for us to be kissing. Kissing Lila would wash away my grief and pain and guilt. It’s all I want in the world.
“You’re going to get all the things you think you can’t have,” she says quietly, reaching out to rub red lipstick from my cheek. “You just don’t know it yet.”
I sigh at the touch of her glove.
* * *
After the eulogies are finished, Grandad steers me toward a black limousine. I slide in, next to my mother, who is already drinking from the minibar. Something brown, out of a heavy-bottomed glass. Barron slides in after me.
We’re quiet, riding. I hear the clink of ice cubes, the exhalation of a single ragged breath. I close my eyes.
“I don’t know what to do with all of Philip’s things,” Mom says suddenly. “Maura’s not coming to get them. We’ll have to put it all in his old room at the house.”
Grandad groans. “I just cleaned that place out.”
“You two better box everything up after the police are finished,” Mom says, ignoring Grandad, her voice threatening hysteria. “His son might want them someday.”
“His son’s not going to want them,” Barron says wearily.
“You don’t know that.” She goes to pour herself more booze from the bar, but the limo hits a bump and the liquor splashes her dress. She starts to cry, not the loud keening from before but quiet sobs that shake her whole body.
I grab some napkins and try to blot the spill. She pushes my hand away.
“You don’t know,” she says to Barron through her tears. “Look at Cassel. That’s his father’s suit.”
“Yeah, and it’s a million years out of style,” says Barron.
I shrug, playing along.
Grandad grins. “It’s going to be all right, Shandra,” he says.
