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They giggle; it encourages my step toward them.

“Apples don’t fall far,” the blonde one says as I step directly behind them. “I don’t know what Luke even sees in her. She’s so—”

“Sweetheart,” I say, making them both turn to look at me, confused. The blonde one I recognize instantly; she has the same faceas her swine of a mother. Poor thing. “You’re Jessica Letts’s girl, aren’t you?”

“The one and only,” she says with a tone that makes me wish she was in an urn.

“Jessicunt was what I liked to call her.” I pause and smile sweetly to let that sink in. When her expression falters, I know it has. “She ever tell you she ate nearly every dick on the football team when we were in high school?”

The brunette laughs, earning a glare from Minicunt that makes her fall silent.

“Figured as much. Not Ford’s though—that’s Wren’s dad, who—how’d you word it? Right,used to be something.” I shrug. “Either way, probably why your dad married her to begin with. Bet you started there, actually. Swallowed into conception—wonder if that’s a thing.” I tap my chin. “Heard they got divorced though. Shame. A willing throat is so hard to find these days.”

She scoffs, but her brown eyes reek of scared shitlessness. My favorite.

Her eyes roam from my boots to my bare shoulder. “And—and who are you?”

“I’m the one that will ruin your pitiful little lives if you ever say anything about Wren Callahan, her combat boots, or any boy she chooses to look at. If she shits in the middle of the hall at school, you will tell her it smells delicious, scoop it up with your fingers, and swallow it down your rotten throats. Got it?”

Two teenage mouths gape at me and my smile widens. “I’m sorry—whatwas that?”

“G-g-got it,” the brunette says.

“Good girls. Now run along and get some cider. Oh! And do tell your mom I say hello.” I shouldn’t, but: “And Ford’s still mine.”

Without hesitating, they scurry like scrawny mice from a hungry cat. Through the crowd, they stop next to dear Jessicunt. She scowls at me when I wave, too-big smile on my face.

“Well, well,” a female voice says from next to me.Charlene.“You always have had quite the way with words. You could have been a poet, Scotty.”

Fuckity-fuck-fuck.

The damage is done, so I simply shrug my bare shoulder, resigned to the fact this woman will hate me forever. “You called it, some things never change, Mrs. Callahan.”

“Charlene,” she corrects.

My eyes widen, but I repeat, “Charlene.”

Her lips twitch as she looks to the Letts girl then back to me, something on her timeless face like amusement. I brace for the impact of whatever she’s about to say, but it in no way prepares me. “I always admired you.”

My head snaps toward her so fast I nearly give myself whiplash.

She chuckles. “I know, I know. Compared to your mother you probably think I’m the most uptight woman in the world. I was raised by Southern Baptists,” she says, adjusting the cuff of her sweater. “Can’t blame me for turning out so good.”

A joke?

I’m slack-jawed, stunned to silence, and she’s . . .smiling?

“Anyway, you just said things that needed to be said, no matter what they were. Just barfed it all out.” She makes a puking gesture with her hands that makes my eyes double in size. “Consequences be damned.”

“Yes,” I finally croak out. “That does seem to be my strong suit.”

She chuckles softly again, and there’s an undeniable warmth in her eyes as she rubs a palm on my back.

“You would have made quite a mother, Scotty.”

The world stops with a scratch of a record, and we stand there, sharing a million words without saying a single one in the middle of the fall-themed chaos. I’ve always assumed she knew, but now I know she did.

Ford and Earl carry a stack of pies across the tent from us.