Rain drums on the roof of the car. I increase the wiper speed, settling into the rhythmic swoosh-swoosh as we drive.
“Think she deserved it? Ginny?”
“’Course not.” Bobby’s face crumples into a deep, angry frown. He takes a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, hesitates, and starts toying with it in his lap.
“It’s okay if you think she did, even if you’re glad she’s gone. It’s basic human psychology.” I say with a chuckle. He throws me another disgusted sneer, but I can’t fucking help myself. “The Germans have a word for it. Schadenfreude. Taking pleasure when bad things happen to someone else, especially if you think they deserve it.”
“Listen here, you puffed-up shitheel.” Bobby shifts in his seat, the leather creaking beneath him as he turns to glare at me. “Ginny didn’t deserve to go like that.”
“Most people don’t get what they deserve. Good or bad.” I shrug, keeping the annoyance out of my tone.
Bobby’s eyes narrow slightly. “Yeah? That was this is about? You telling me Princess Shit of Turd Mountaindeservesto dick around with those country club brats because her mama died and I couldn’t afford to get her a goddamn pony?”
I laugh, and fuck, how that makes his blood boil. I can see it in the way he grits the stubs of his decaying teeth, how the cigarette packet crumples in his grip.
“You certainly have a way with words, Bobby.” I lift my hand, cutting off the angry sound he makes. “She’s a smart girl with abright future ahead of her. Just because she took your car, that doesn’t mean she deserves?—“
“Bitch has got you fooled! That innocent look of hers don’t mean shit!” Spittle flies out of his lips, and thank God none of it touches me. “My Ginny had that look. Like butter wouldn’t melt in her fucking mouth.” His mouth twists into something that might be a smile on a less ravaged face. “Girl’s got a mean streak. Gets that from her mother too.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Haven doesn’t strike me as mean-spirited.”
“No?” Bobby laughs, the sound like gravel in a blender. “Ask her ‘bout Lenny, then.”
I search my memory for the name, but nothing comes up, which means she didn’t mention him anywhere on her application or in her essay. He could have been anyone. Old boyfriend, classmate, family member.
“Lenny?”
“Georgia’s brother.” He lets out a wet laugh, his voice dropping an octave with sentimentality. “Ginny and Lenny. Jesus, those two. Got up to all kinds of shit together.” He scratches at his neck again, harder this time. “Always chasing the next high, ’til Ginny took the express train out.”
“And Lenny?”
Bobby’s expression darkens. “Disappeared.” His bloodshot eyes fix on me, sharply focused with sudden paranoia. “Roundabout the same time Princess took off running with my car.”
“Yet you were sureshestole your car?”
“Lenny never learned to drive. Always had me or Ginny cart him around.”
“You think they’re connected,” I say carefully. “Lenny disappearing. Haven leaving.”
He turns back to the window, watching raindrops race down the glass. “Never believed in coincidences. That cunt knows exactly what happened to him,” he says quietly.
There’s more to his croaking voice than simple suspicion about missing family.
There’s hatred there.
Raw and festering.
“You think she’d harm your brother-in-law?” I press, watching his face for the first sign I should back off.
Bobby’s expression hardens. “Didn’t say shedidsomething to him. Just said she knows what happened to ‘im. Like, if he ran, she’d know where.”
“And where’s that?”
“Think I’d be in your fancy-ass car to catch a bus back to nowhere if I knew that?”
“No, of course not. So you contacted the police?”
He gives me a sneering glance. “What for?”
