There is no part of what happened today that I care to share. Instead, I tell her I had a run-in with a glass door.
“Mmm, huh,” she says rather dryly, side-eyeing me, knowing it’s a lie but she doesn’t press further. It’s a small town, the truth will eventually make its way to her. I’ll deal with it then. “Let’s get this fixed up.” She frowns at the bruise, then scrounges in her overstuffed purse until she finds her makeup bag. Aunt Violet wears enough foundation and makeup for the both of us, but I don’t mind her fussing—might spare me a few questions later on. “Look, sugar...” She dots out some concealer before blending it with her thumb. “Have the cops come to talk to you again about Stone?”
I feel my stomach tighten instantly at the mention of Stone’s name. “Not since they first brought me in for questioning. Why? That why Rankin was here?”
“Yeah, he wanted to know if you stayed the night at the house the night before he died.” She glances out in the hallway to make sure no one can hear and then closes us in her office. “But don’t worry none, I covered for you. If they ask, you tell them we had leftover spaghetti for dinner. Maybe drank a few beers. And went to bed around one a.m. And you didn’t leave until the next morning, say like, before nine.” She dusts on a little bit of powder, then leans back to observe her work.
“But I did stay the night with you that night.” Though I snuck in through Adaire’s bedroom window, and I tell her that.
Aunt Violet pauses in dusting my cheek. Her brow crinkles up in confusion. She stares at me, unsure how to process this information. “Wait, you’re saying you stayed at the house the night Stone was murdered?” The way she asks, it’s like she’s going to need a little proof to verify my story. “When did you get there?” Her voice shakes a little.
“I... I’m not sure, probably two thirty, three a.m. I was pretty drunk.”
She chews on this a bit. “Okay then, if they ask, it was between one and two. Then we have similar stories.” She nods, satisfied, as if this tiny change will matter somehow.
“Oh-kay. But you believe me, Aunt V, don’t you?” Aunt Violet, with her nervous hand, closes her powder compact, unable to look at me. The color drains from her face.
Suddenly, this tiny office feels smaller and stuffy with the door closed. “You believe me, don’t you?” I ask again.
She swallows hard, nodding. “Yeah,” she says slowly, as if lost in thought. That nod of hers picking up pace as though she has to assure herself this new information is okay. “Yeah. Don’t tell the cops you snuck in the window, okay? Stick with what I said: we ate spaghetti, had a few beers, and went to bed between one or two in the morning. Left before nine the next day. Okay?”
I watch her warily. She truly believes she’s covering for me. My own family thinking I’m capable of something so brutal as murder. “You know I didn’t kill Stone, right?” I ask, but honestly I’m not certain she does.
Her head jerks up, and then looks me straight in the eye. “That man deserved to die, you hear me? No one needs to feel guilty for avenging their family. But if you say you didn’t do it, then you didn’t do it.” Aunt Violet smarts a nod. I release a sigh.
The office door swings open, causing us both to jump. Raelean shoves her head in and pauses, picking up the intensity in the air. Then she pops off. “Hate to interrupt your little family meeting, but if you want a ride, it’s now or never.”
“Coming.” I move to follow her out, and then I pause. “Hey, Aunt V, is it true what Raelean said, you’re sober now?”
A soft smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. “Yeah, doll, nineteen days and counting. I started thinking about my baby girl. And if her dying isn’t a reason to get my act straight, then I don’t know what is. Now, you get on out of here and keep your ass out of trouble. And the next time someone clocks you in the face, I better hear you gave it back to them twice as good.” She chucks me on the chin. “Glass door, my ass. Get out of here.”
She smacks me on the butt to get going.
Some rowdy Hank Williams Jr. song tune blasts from the jukebox. There’s a boisterous conversation going on between a group of guys hanging around the pool table.
“Now maybe we won’t have to hear you bellyaching about not getting first kill of the season,” an old guy says to Jimmy Daughtry, and the crowd erupts in laughter.
Raelean catches Jimmy’s eye as we pass. “Hey, sugar, why don’t you come over and sit in Jimmy’s lap and celebrate with me?” He gives his legs a hearty pat.
“Sure thing, Jimmy,” she says, giving him a half second of hope. “Right after I’m done dropping off baby formula for the newborn your wife is home taking care of—bastard.” The last part she huffs under her breath.
“You’re no fun!” he hollers as we step out of the cigarette haze and into fresh early evening air.
“What’s he celebrating? Wasn’t his baby born, like, a month ago?” I ask as we walk over to Raelean’s blue Camaro.
“Yeah.” Raelean totters over the gravel in her heels. “He’s celebrating the fact he doesn’t have to buy any meat for the next month. But his truck fender paid the price for it.”
I eye the damaged truck as we pass it and freeze as I catch sight of an antler sticking up out of the truck bed.
“A dead deer,” I whisper to myself.
“That’s right.” Raelean tugs open her car door but pauses to watch me a second.
“A dead deer caused that kind of damage to his truck.” A rhetorical question.
“Yeah. Why? What’s turning over in your head there, Weatherly?”
Davis is wrong. Stone’s pristine bumper is not nothing. Lorelei driving her father’s car is not nothing. Gabby talking about hitting a dead deer is not nothing.
“You know what? On second thought, don’t drive me home. Drive me to the police station.”
FIFTEEN
Dumber Than Dirt
The shadow of a bird sails along the highway, following slightly ahead of Raelean’s car. She’s rambling on about how lousy the Watering Hole tips are and how maybe she should make her way over to Nashville and find an up-and-coming music star at a honky-tonk to hang around with.
The crow shadow splits and divides, from one to many, and I smile.
They speckle the sky, a soft black veil. Their ebb and flow like ripples in a river against the orange and purples of the eventide.
“Whoa.” Raelean leans forward over her steering wheel to get a better look. “You seeing this? There’s so many.” Her voice a marvel.
And yet it’s only the one, Rook just divided. “We’re in the hour of crows,” I tell her. “It’s when the day is no longer but the night is not yet.”
Raelean eases back, watching me. “That sounds really beautiful and creepy as shit. Jesus, Weatherly.” She shakes her head. “Are they gonna, like, swoop down and peck our eyes out or what?”
I huff a small laugh. “No. It means the crows are gathering at the end of the day for a night’s rest.”
