Their mother didn’t move. “Babby, please just look at me?”
Her head was ringing like a broken alarm clock; Tabby tried, and found she couldn’t. She could not maintain eye contact with the woman who’d once told her to wait by the gate with her owl backpack so she could take her away from her sisters and her dad.
But you ran away in the end, didn’t you?A lone voice had whispered in her mind.All over the world and back. And you’ll do it again. Cartagena. Hanoi. Wherever. Whoever. You’ll never belong to anyone. You’ll never be okay.
“Tabby,” Jo had implored. “I’m your mum.”
“I’m her mum,” Nicole snapped. “Sam’s her mum. You’re a fucking incubator. Now go!”
But it had become clear to Tabby that Jo wouldn’t leave. Not until she said something. Wiping her eyes, she forced herself to meet her mother’s eyes. “We can’t be close,” she said in a voice that sounded nothing like hers. “You had a choice, and you made it. It’s done.”
“But—”
“This is my family,” she said. “Sam and Scott and Nix and Noah and Dad and the dogs and?—”
And she stopped herself before she said a ridiculous name—Toby’s.
“See?” Nicole snapped. “She doesn’t need you. You’re not a part of her life.”
“Really? Look at this.” Jo shoved up her sleeve and showed the tarot card tattoo Tabby had put there. Before Toby. Before the end of the world.
“She did this because she loves me! Look!”
Nicole laughed, tossing her long black hair like someone had just told a great joke at a dinner party. “I have something to show you, Deborah.”
She held up her right wrist, and Sam, smiling fit to kill a man, did the same.
“Twins with matching tattoos,” Jo snorted. “Original!”
“Oh, it’s not just us,” Nicole said. “Tabby?”
Her lips numb, Tabby had followed her sister, pushing up the sleeve of her lilac hoodie so their mother could see the daisy chain tattoo all three of them shared.
The power Tabby had felt flowing through her in that moment was surreal. She’d been so tied to her sisters, their dad, and the past. That shared, beautiful, ugly past that had been cemented in the tattoo they’d all been given by their dad the day they turned eighteen. Sam and Nix first. Her, five years later. The sisters of Brunswick North. The daughters of Silver Daughters Ink.
“Dad did them,” Nix said, and for the first time her voice was full of tears. “He was the first person to tattoo all of us because he was here. Because hematters.”
Jo’s eyes had darted between the matching daisy tattoos, her face pale and angry once again. Then she pointed a finger at Tabby. “You’re a selfish little bitch,” she spat. “You were supposed to come, but no. You abandoned me. You chose your fucking father like the other two. I tried, I fuckingtried, but I shouldn’t have bothered. You’ve made up your mind. You wanted this life, these people. Well, good luck putting up with them, because you won’t see me ever again!”
At that, Sam and Nicole jumped to their feet, shouting and swearing so loud that the manager rushed over. But as her sisters had tried to explain and Jo swanned out of the café, without a backward glance, Tabby had just sat there, shellshocked.
She didn’t remember walking back from the café or a single word Nicole or Sam had said. She’d had barely a thought as she put on her black pleather dress and did her make up as fancy as she knew how. She’d driven to Toby with one thing on her mind—to escape in the way only he could provide. To return her to her body and hurt her in ways that made sense.
And now she was in his house, and he was saying the same things as her sisters—that she needed to talk and process and think about what had happened, and she felt the same irritation she’d felt back in Brunswick as she took Nicole’s car keys without asking and ignored Sam’s tears.
I can’t give you what you need, she’d told them.I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself.
Toby was still talking, still saying something about Jo.
“I’m just like her,” she interrupted. “Jo. Deborah. Whatever. I’m just like her. I run away, and I’m fucking useless. I’m unreliable, and I’m only good at art, and I hate myself like I hate her, and I’ve never lived up to anybody’s expectations, andI don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Toby came close, his eyes full of that same concern that had driven her out of her home and into Nicole’s car. Tabby wished she’d never gone to the Village Belle that night. That they’d never reconnected. That she hadn’t slept with him at all.
“I should go,” she said. “I should leave. I don’t belong here.”
“You belong anywhere I am,” Toby said, and he pulled up his sleeve to show her the whole of his stag tattoo. “See? You know how I said I wanted fingerprints? I wanted your fingerprints. Why do you think I wanted that?”
Tabby was forcibly reminded of Jo showing off her tarot card tattoo, and bile rose in her mouth. “Stop it.”
