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Kate thins her lips as her mind works behind shielded eyes. “Grace is the only one with a bond strong enough to Henry that she would—”
“Kill us all for killing him?”
“He had friends,” Kate ponders aloud, as though Billie hadn’t spoken at all. “But none of them could possibly know. Even if they did,” she adds, “why would any of them go to these lengths for, what,revenge?”
Eyes on Kate’s guarded ones, the ones that have theories whirling behind them, Billie picks absentmindedly at the label. “Or if it is Grace, she roped someone into help her. She can’t take us out, not by herself, and she knows that.”
“It might explain why, all of a sudden, right after Cletus was killed, Grace invited us over to her place—wanted to join us again after years of being a stranger.”
“So… Carmine either told her, gave us away somehow, or Grace figured it out… and she, I don’t know, hired someone to help her out?”
Kate hums. “But who would help her with this? They must have something to gain.”
“Money.” It’s nothing but a guess, yet “Money’s usually the motive, isn’t it? Husbands kill their wives for money, because it’s cheaper than divorce, and… I don’t know, that’s all I have.”
They’d gotten themselves so caught up in the yearbook that neither of them noticed the music—still playing, but had been—turned down. Loud enough still to reach upstairs, but not to rattle the bones of the house or tremble the floor.
Kate only realizes when she hears a sudden roar of an engine coming to life. Drawing away from the bed, she moves for the window and, peeling back the shade, peeks outside. “Thank God.”
“What?” Billie forces her weight upright to sit. She’s no heavyset gal, but something about the drink makes her feel a thousand pounds. “They’re leaving?”
The back of her head bobs with a slight nod. “Some.” She releases the shade, letting it fall back into place. “I’m starved.”
“Get me potato chips,” Billie says and kicks out her foot lazily for Kate as she passes by. “3D Doritos, if they have them. Oh, and Eggos—”
Kate grabs her by the ankle, her blue dog-print sock ruffling. With a tug, she says, “Get your lazy ass up. I’m no one’s maid.”
Billie grumbles under her breath, “Maids clean, not get snacks.”
But Kate doesn’t hear her. She’s already at the door, pulling it open, then looking back at Billie. They pause. Hesitation has Kate faltering in the doorway, hand on the brass knob, her head turned towards Billie but her eyes downcast to the carpet.
Billie’s brow knits together. Her mouth turns down at the corner, and she waits—waits for Kate to spill whatever is on her mind, tell her whichever secrets are on the tip of her tongue. All the clichés.
Billie waits.
Then, finally, Kate just shakes her head—as if to throw out of mind what she wanted to say to Billie—turns and walks out the door.
‘Freak’, would have been something Billie would’ve shouted after Kate, but not these days, not when it could very well be the last words spoken to each other.
So, with a grunt of too much effort, she forces herself off the bed and, with a last lingering look at the yearbook full of questions and no answers, follows Kate out.
Under the dim hallway light, Kate asks, “Doesn’t Cletus have a brother?”
Billie knows what she’s really asking; if Randy could be Blood Hood. It’s a fair thought.
But not when Billie explains, “Randy’s got a bad limp. Guy can barely walk, never mind chase people. Lost his leg in a gator fight, like forever ago.” Long before either of the girls were even born. “He has some sort of plastic, fake leg. Can’t be him.”
Kate accepts this in her thoughtful silence, without Billie elaborating that Randy only ever helps Cletus by bringing him food from town, some basic supplies, but never more than that. Those brothers hated each other, everyone in the trailer park knows that. Something about that gator fight…
They tread and thump their way down the wide, mahogany staircase. It’s only one flight of stairs down to the first floor but it’s too long for Billie, a trek when all she can do is look up at those godawful tapestries covering the walls but think of everything she’s trying not to think about. The moment she gives in to the battle in her mind, permanent pictures of Carmine glued to her brain, she’ll snap. She’ll lose it completely. So Billie does all she knows how to do. Land her thoughts on booze.
And that’s what she does as she follows Kate through the foyer to the large double doors—already open, revealing the dining table with toppled-over chairs and a booming outpour of laughter and shouts.
Boys.
Billie’s mouth turns with a frown.
Last thing she wants to be around right now is boys.
