“Good,” she said. “Because you won't get it. Not from me.” She tossed back her drink in one swallow. “Danny was a good kid. He just wanted to help that girl.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” She leaned across the bar, close enough that Judah could smell the drink on her breath. “Do you know what it's like to lose someone like that? To never get answers? To have thesheriff hand you some bullshit about hunting accidents while everyone in town looks the other way?”
Cole put a hand on Dice's arm. She shook it off.
The hard truth? Yeah, Judah did. His father had sold hismotherto Hargrove when debts had piled up too steep for him to find another way out of bankruptcy. But that was not something he was ready to share out loud.
“You’re a piece of shit, Judah,” Dice spat. Then a moment of silence, and when it passed, she sighed and said, “But for what’s it worth,” and when she said this, she glanced at Billy, “you’re owning up to it. So that’s a start.”
The bar settled into a heavy quiet. Judah nodded, accepting the judgment. It was fair. More than fair. He just wanted them to know.
The jukebox played. The afternoon heat pressed against the windows and couldn't get in. Reed eventually turned back to the bar and Billy eventually filled the silence with something inconsequential about his aunt and the parish council, and Cole laughed in the right place, and the room breathed again.
At some point Judah stopped tracking the glasses even more than he was not tracking them before.
He was aware, in a general way, of the hour moving. Of Reed leaving and coming back with food from somewhere — a bag of something fried, set on the bar. Of Dice moving up and down the length of the bar, tending to the afternoon regulars.
She refilled his water glass twice without comment after she’d decided he had to be cut off. Not because he couldn’t hold himself upright or because he talked nonsense — but because deep down Dice still cared.
He ate some of the food because Billy put it directly in front of him and gave him a look.
At some point in the late afternoon, he put his head down on his arms on the bar and closed his eyes for just a minute.
The next thing he knew Billy had him by the arm and the light through the door had gone amber and low.
“Up,” Billy said.
“I'm up.”
“You're not up. You say you’re it but we’re not there, man.” He had Judah's weight on his shoulder, moving toward the door. “Say goodnight.”
Judah looked back.
Dice was behind the bar, watching him go. Reed raised a hand. Cole nodded.
“Goodnight,” Judah said.
Dice looked at him. It was complicated between them — and would always be, but they’d been best friends as kids and that kind of friendship didn’t die easy. Even if one of them were an outstanding piece of shit.
“Go sleep it off, Judah,” she said.
He let Billy take him out into the amber heat of St. Francisville at five in the afternoon, the Spanish moss going gold in the light, the oaks massive and indifferent, the town doing what it always did — nothing and everything at once.
Billy got him as far as the lamp post.
“Did we walk here?” Judah managed, tilting his head back against the pole.
“Regrettably.” Billy sniffed and pulled his phone out. “I’mma call someone, and you’re gonna be on your best behavior, understood?”
Judah exhaled, tasting nothing but whiskey on his tongue. “Understood.”
He looked at the street. A woman with a stroller. Thibodaux Senior locking up. Two kids on bikes going nowhere in particular.
The town knew. It would know by morning, if it didn't already — the pastor, drunk in Randy's at midday, Billy Arceneauxcarrying him out. Sister Ruth would have a whole theology about it.
Somehow, he couldn’t find two shits to give about it.
