Page 69

“It’s a Friday. You’d have all weekend.” She sighed through pursed lips. “How did I ever raise such a goody-two-shoes?”

Mainly by providing disturbing examples of what’d happen if I wasn’t one? But I did my best to give her a charming,‘Beats me!’grin.

“Sure. Of course you can,” she said.

I pre-winced a little to acknowledge the seriousness of my next question. “Can I also borrow the car for it?”

She put on a show. “I guess. Bring it back in one piece though. Go get me my phone, so I can call Barb.”

I raced back to her bedroom and grabbed her phone without thinking. In an instant, everything on it downloaded to me.

If Tricia’s late again, she’s gonna get fired?—

who cares, she’s a cunt!

No, I know, I need her shifts, Jerry’s late again?—

they’re your kids too, Jerry?—

who has time for that?

Of course I’ll come in?—

yeah, she’s always been trouble?—

I can’t, now that we’re down Jessie’s job?—

She said that? I can’t believe her!

Didn’t your little sister go to school with her?

What about later?

Go home, I can close. I need the $$$

Do you think Don’ll be there?

I’m allowed to have needs, Barbara ;)

Jerry, seriously, where’s my cash?

I bet your new kids get dental?—

I dropped the phone, then caught it, then set it down and squatted over it, wracked with things I didn’t want to know and a stabbing sensation in my temporal lobe. No wonder my mother mythologized her time in high school, when her current life was an endless struggle to make ends meet. It might have been the last time she was carefree.

“Jessie?” she called from the living room, and I picked up her phone carefully with my fingernails, not my fingers. I knew why my mom drank—and it kinda made me want to drink, too. I plastered a fake-ass smile on my face and went back into the living room.

“Here you go!” I said, handing her phone over.

She started texting Barbara for her ride. “Just make sure to leave before the cops break this one up, okay?” she said, smiling at me. For me.

“Sure thing,” I promised. The second she left for work I started plotting.

If there were other pictures, how many there were? And who else had seen them?

I wouldn’t know if I couldn’t get to the source—Danny—and so I dressed with him in mind.

Danny always looked like a cover model for Midwestern Monthly, the hatband around his hair near permanent, one outfit change away from a camo-shirt at all times. If it was his destiny to cradle rifles near slaughtered bucks, what should I wear as his wannabe cornfed bride? I didn’t remember what Lacey’d worn to her party so I erred on the side of caution, with a tight red tank that showed off my chest shamelessly, a denim mini, and strappy white sandals. I checked myself out in the mirror. I’d never been so patriotic before.