Kate’s mouth met her ear. “Let’s just walk away.”
Abby heaved for air. That dreaded squeal arrived, ringing like the phone when the police called that night with the news, the same warning squelch that her world was cracking, and she’d never be whole.
“It’s not true. And even if it is, even if you throw money at me, it doesn’t make you my father. You haven’t been a father for twenty years!”
“That’s just the story you tell yourself ! The story your mother brainwashed you with!”
The ring hit its crescendo. Burst in her. The calm sliver she clung to, more for Kate and her friends than for herself, snapped. The tendons in her neck corded and her lips stretched back from her teeth. “You don’t know! You never had to be there!”
“No, you don’t know!” Audie screamed through spittle. “I wanted to see you! But she kept me away. Poisoned you against me so that when you got older, you didn’t want me around even when I tried!”
“Because you made her fucking crazy!” Abby’s heart thundered. Her vision flashed red, then black, so that later she wouldn’t remember the rest. “Every time you showed up, she cried and drank for days until the next time! She’s fucking dead because of you!”
“Don’t say that! I loved her, but she was a sick woman!”
“Like you’re any better? I can smell it on you!”
Abby didn’t think. She just shoved him. And like any mirror would, Audie launched back, as if her explosion lit his nearby fuse. He reached, clutched her cheeks in a single hand, and squeezed.
“No!”
A blur of color and bodies and yelling. Kate ripped Audie’s arm away. Jill and Mick jumped in too, dragging them back as Abby tried to swipe at him. Bystanders swooped between the Cruzes, who shouted nonsense, lunged, and pointed at each other.
“Everyone on the bus! Now!” Coach Whitley herded them away.
Abby didn’t remember getting on the bus, or Kate’s murmurs and arms, or covering her ears and rocking in her seat. But she remembered the words that left her mouth as if echoing from a tunnel, ahead or behind her, she wasn’t sure.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered.
Kate squeezed her hand. “Can’t do what?”
“Any of it.” She rested her head against the cool window, farmland and fence posts rushing past. For once, she was grateful that Kate had nothing to say, as if admitting defeat. As if accepting that she couldn’t outrun the curse.
Crickets chirped and the hotel pool glowed fluorescent blue. Abby lounged on the edge, a trail of smoke twisting up from her fingers. Kate paused at the metal gate and sighed in relief. She half expected her to disappear after Audie. Perhaps because the last time Kate saw her so distraught and inaccessible, unharmed but not quite safe, was when she wandered away in Phoenix.
“I thought you kicked those for good.”
“Sorry.” Abby blew smoke over her shoulder.
“It’s okay.” Kate sat beside her. “I think today warrants a free pass.”
“Are you all right?”
“Me?” Kate tucked a piece of Abby’s hair, still damp from the shower, behind her ear.
Her throat bobbed as she tapped ash from her cigarette. “You pushed him away.”
“I’d never let anything happen to you.” Kate’s mouth turned up at the corners in a weak smile. She wasn’t one to fight, but had quickly discovered the exception, unsurprised that as usual, it was Abby. “Had he ever been physical like that before?”
“No. Never.” Abby’s eyes turned glassy while she stared into the pool. “My mom threw a plate at him once and he had to get stitches, but even then, he never laid a hand on her or me.”
Abby’s phone vibrated between them and flashed with Isla’s name. She didn’t move to answer it.
“Have you talked to her?” Kate asked.
“No. She should have told me about the money.”
“Isla loves you. I’m sure she had her reasons.”
