Still, I wasn’t taking any chances.
“Let me go first,” I said, pushing my door open. Both dogs wiggle-butted right up to me, tails blurring, noses leaving wet marks on my pants. “They’re fine,” I told Stella, and she climbed out next.
They went around and greeted her, and then retreated toward the house like their jobs were done and they could go back to napping.
“The fuck are you doing here?” a raspy voice called.
I turned to see Jenny standing by the railing, wearing a blue-and-white tie-dyed dress, her long brown hair piled on top of her head, a blunt dangling from her fingers. She’d lost weight since the last time I’d seen her, the dress hanging loose on her frame.
“I came to talk to you,” I said.
She took a long hit off the blunt, eyeing me over the top of it. Yup, this was going about how I expected.
“This is my girlfriend, Stella,” I said, putting a hand on her lower back to get her moving. Why I felt the need to still play-act like we were together, I had no idea. Maybe it was habit at this point, a way to explain her presence.
Jenny exhaled a cloud of smoke and looked Stella over from head to toe. “I thought you left here because you wanted to get away from the trash?”
Stella reached the porch steps first, extending her hand toward my aunt. “It’s been a long fucking night. At least give me a hit if you’re going to be an immediate bitch to me.”
Jenny barked a laugh, caught off-guard, and passed the blunt over. “Maybe you’re not so bad.”
“I’ve even been told I’m tolerable once or twice,” Stella said, taking an even longer drag then Jenny had.
My aunt chuckled.
I pulled the blunt from Stella’s fingers when she tried to take a second hit. “Calm down, lightweight.” I wasn’t one, so I took two drags and passed it back to my aunt.
“What do you want?” she said.
I blew out a lungful of smoke. “To talk about Mom.”
She scowled. “You finally going to tell me where you hid her?”
“I didn’thide her,I gave her the burial she deserved, without help from any of you.”
Jenny pointed the blunt at me. “Don’t start that bullshit. I was injail, Tyler. What the fuck did you expect me to do from there? Barter my commissary money for a headstone?”
I clenched my jaw shut on a retort. I was not getting dragged into this fight again.
“I just want to say goodbye to my sister,” Jenny said.
“Fine. I’ll tell you where she is. After you answer my questions and promisenot to tell anyone else in the family. She’s finally at peace, and I don’t want them bothering her.”
“Like I talk to any of those fuckers.” She studied me for a second. “What do you want to know?”
“What happened to Mom in the city?”
Her gaze slid away from mine. “Why are you asking me that now, after all these years?”
“Because I found Richard.”
Her eyes, the same pale blue my mother’s had been, landed back on me. “What do you mean, you found him? You promised Meg you wouldn’t go looking.” She inspected my clothes—dirty, but expensive—before her gaze slid to my six-figure car. “Don’t tell me youlivethere.”
“I live there.”
“Goddamn it,Tyler. He didn’t lie and tell you he tried to find you two, did he?”
A tingle ran up my spine. Why—the fuck—had my aunt jumped straight to that conclusion? “Why would you think he said that?”
