He says nothing.
So I press my luck one more time. “What does a coffin nail mean to you?” Is it Lydia? Is it the person texting me? Are they the same? I didn’tshowDad the messages. Only told him vaguely about the anonymous texter. If he read them, they’d involve Sloane.
Dad narrows his gaze and tilts his head, his thick fingers curling around the shifter of his BMW. “In what context?”
I shake my head once. “Any.”
He knows I’m lying, the way he stares at me hard, but after a moment he just says, “Do you know your mother used to do witchcraft?”
I am not very surprised. With her goth wardrobe and her long black and silver hair, not to mention the quiet strength and violence radiating around her, she looks like a witch. But I just say, “No.”
“Coffin nails are protection. Unless they’re not.”
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
SLOANE
“This is unsurprising.” Caspian’s voice holds his relatively newly acquired academic know-it-all tone and, in my head, I see him pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation as he paces around his third floor apartment, books slinking all along his hardwoods.
But he bought me the rare French edition ofThe Flowers of Evilthat cost ten grand and currently lives on the small wooden bookshelf beside my canopy bed at my place so I don’t call him out on his pretension.
Where did he get ten grand to spend on a used book for his sister? No one seems to know. If you ask him too many questions about the software developer he’s currently assisting, he gets pompous and cagey both. Cas likes to feel important and the more we starve him of it, the better we feel. In a very loving way, of course.
I shift my position on the bench in the backyard of some sorority house. I’m surrounded by dying flowers and alive shrubs and there’s a tiny bird fountain in the center of the shoddy hedge maze. With two shots of vodka and one wine cooler in my system, plus too little food from a full day of classes,I feel giddy and therefore unprepared for this somber sibling phone call.
In fact, ten minutes ago I was inside the packed house dancing up on Dax and grinning at my friend and fellow marketing major, Tyli. The music was loud and there were no thoughts of Storm inside my head. None either on the fact that I can’t seem to find the camera he hinted at having on my doorstep because of some coffin nails. I didn’t dare look up the symbolism; it seems obvious enough to me. In my mind, I rationalized it. Storm had been at my house a few days before he claims they were dropped there on my doorstep. Whoever left the message, it was for him and not for me. Maybe I’m naive to let that go, but I don’t care.
His world is not mine.
A toddler’s shriek breaks me out of my daze of staring at the stars and doing my best not to think of Storm fucking Leary.
Heather sighs loudly.
“No, no,” she says distantly to my nephew, exasperation in her Mom voice as she gently scolds Rome. Then more clearly, she adds, “It’s unsurprising, sure, but it’s still shit.”
Henry laughs, but it’s full of icy anger. “I don’t know why we’re bothering with this call. Dad will do nothing because he’s a cuck, and Mom will max out his cards again to pay for the dresses he destroyed, and in one week’s time, the three of us will sit down together for dinner and pretend everything is fine. None ofyouhave to deal with it any longer. It isn’t your problem.”
I hear the pain in his voice though, clenched tight like a fist. He didn’t want us to call, he said, but he’s the one who sent the group text to all of us older siblings to tell us Mom cheated on Dad again, then he tore up her things, and both of them left the house in separate vehicles, yelling at one another at the top of their lungs.
Part of me thinks I should go home.
Fall break started today, hence the party, but I’m halfway to drunk. I can’t drive. Getting a ride might not be too difficult but I don’t even know if Henry would want me there. Regardless, I’m the closest, with Heather at the coast and Caspian never willing to leave his perch up at Harvard.
Henry is brooding, a lot like Storm in that way. But Henry is a teenager and Storm is a grown man who seems to have done nothing to work on himself and his bullshit and?—
My sister’s voice interrupts my errant thoughts. “Hen, it’ll be okay. Soon you’ll be out of there and you won’t have to pretend alongside them. And look on the bright side. Tonight you’re alone and you can stay up all night and eat their food and fuck up the house if you’d like.” Heather drops a rare F bomb in her comfort pep talk and I smile as I turn on the bench and lie on my back, my knees bent. The Versace crop I’m wearing isn’t my most elegant party style, but the denim skirt and leopard print heels fit the sorority vibe and besides, why does any of it matter? Here I am in the furthest corner of the backyard by myself staring up at the stars and knowing I should be home and not here.
Henry sighs but he says nothing.
“Chin up,” Caspian says in his pretending-to-be-old-money tone. “You can handle this.”
“Fuck off, Caspian.” Henry has a snarl he reserves just for his older brother and I almost laugh out loud when I hear it, but I smack my hand over my mouth and keep it in. Then I turn my head a little, since my long hair is pulled up into a high, silk pony and I don’t like lying on it pressed against my skull.
“Do you want Sloane to stop by?” Heather asks softly, knowing without asking me I’ll go if I have to. I’m glad she brought it up and not me. This way I’ll hear he doesn’t want methere without having asked the question directly. It hurts a little when he says it, if I’m being honest. It’s nice to feel wanted.
But just as Henry quietly says no, he’s good, I think about the coffin nails.
