CHAPTER 17
What Dally Heard
°°°
They didn't get the full story out of Dally until well past midnight, all of them back at Vivian's kitchen table with mugs of tea nobody was really drinking, the adrenaline of the night slowly curdling into the specific exhaustion that came after a fear had resolved but hadn't yet finished leaving the body.
The kitchen felt different than it had a few hours earlier, the earlier panic replaced now by something quieter and more careful, everyone moving with the gentleness of people who understood how easily the fragile relief of the moment could crack if handled wrong.
Vivian had put the kettle on almost the instant they'd walked through the door, some old instinct toward ritual and care asserting itself even through her own exhaustion, and the small domestic normalcy of it — mugs clinking, the kettle's familiar whistle, Dally wrapped in a blanket at the table — did more to steady the room than anything anyone actually said.
"I heard you and Emery talking. At the cookout.
" Dally sat wrapped in one of her grandmother's old cardigans, hands cupped around her mug, looking younger than her sixteen years in the harsh kitchen light.
"About what the club covered up. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, I was just walking back from the bathroom and you were right there by the cooler, and I heard enough to understand something big was being kept from everyone, and I just — I couldn't stop thinking about it after that. "
"Dally." Rhys's voice was gentle but firm. "You should have come to me. Asked me directly."
"Would you have told me the truth?" She looked at him with the unflinching directness that Emery recognized now as a family trait, inherited or learned, she couldn't tell which. "Or would you have decided I couldn't handle it, the same way you apparently decided that about Emery for months?"
The question landed hard, and Emery watched Rhys absorb it without flinching, some old defensive instinct visibly restrained in favor of actually sitting with the accusation's fairness.
"You're right," he said finally. "I probably would have decided that. I'm working on it. Doesn't excuse tonight, but it's true."
Dally seemed to accept that, some of the tension in her shoulders easing by a fraction.
"I found her number through Mia's older sister, who used to run with some of the same crowd.
Texted her, said I wanted to talk, and she actually said yes, which honestly surprised me.
Told me to meet her at that motel." She wrapped both hands tighter around her mug.
"She never showed. I waited almost three hours.
But she texted me once, early on, before her phone must have died or she turned it off or whatever happened — she said something like, tell your uncle they're not waiting for Friday anymore. "
Vivian made a small, sharp sound at that, her hand pressing flat against the table like she needed something solid to hold onto, and Rhys reached over automatically to steady his mother's other hand, the small gesture of family looking after family even in the middle of everything else the night had held.
The room went very still, and Emery felt the specific cold drop of dread settle into her stomach.
"Not waiting for Friday," Rhys repeated slowly. "The deadline Preacher gave us. Salazar's not waiting for it."
"She didn't explain more than that. I tried texting back and got nothing.
" Dally's voice had gone smaller, some of her earlier bravado finally cracking under the weight of what she might have stumbled into.
"I'm sorry. I know I made everything more complicated by going.
I just wanted to understand, and now I'm scared I made it worse instead. "
"You didn't make it worse." Emery said it firmly, reaching across the table to cover Dally's hand with her own. "You got us information nobody else had. That's not nothing, even if the way you got it scared everyone half to death."
"There's a difference between the outcome and the choice," Rhys added, though his voice had gone rough with the effort of separating the two.
"The choice was still dangerous, Dally. I need you to understand that, really understand it, not just hear me say it.
You could have been hurt tonight in ways none of us could have fixed.
But Emery's right that what you learned matters. Both things are true."
Dally nodded, some of the fight finally draining out of her now that the immediate crisis had passed, exhaustion visibly claiming her by degrees. Vivian, who'd been quiet through most of the exchange, finally spoke.
"I think this conversation can finish tomorrow," she said, standing, her voice carrying the plain authority of a grandmother who'd decided enough was enough for one night. "Everyone needs sleep. Dally most of all."
Nobody argued with her.
~ ~ ~
Emery found Dally on the back porch an hour later, unable to sleep herself, some restless energy from the night still humming under her skin. Dally sat curled in one of the porch chairs, wrapped in a blanket now instead of the cardigan, staring out at the dark yard.
"Can't sleep either?" Emery asked, settling into the chair beside her.
"Keep replaying it. Sitting in that room, waiting, getting more and more scared that I'd done something really stupid and there was no way to undo it.
" Dally pulled the blanket tighter. "I kept thinking about my mom.
How she used to say I had more nerve than sense. I used to think that was a compliment."
"It can be both. Nerve and sense aren't actually opposites, even though it feels that way sometimes.
" Emery watched the dark yard, the same cicada song from the porch conversation weeks ago still humming steady in the background.
"For what it's worth, I understand the impulse.
Wanting to know the truth badly enough that you're willing to do something reckless to get it.
I've felt that exact thing more than once this month. "
"Is that why you stayed? After everything with Uncle Rhys?" Dally's question came out careful, testing, the delicacy of a teenager asking an adult something she wasn't sure she was allowed to ask. "Because you wanted to actually understand instead of just walking away with half the picture?"
Emery considered the question honestly before answering, turning it over the way she might turn over a piece of leather looking for the flaw.
"Partly. I think, for a long time, I was scared of the actual truth.
Scared that understanding all of it would either make me hate him more than I already did, or — worse, somehow — make me still love him anyway even knowing everything.
I think I've spent this whole month finding out it's the second one, and having to figure out what to do with that. "
"That sounds exhausting."
"It is. It's also better than the alternative, I think.
I spent a lot of years being scared to know things, hoping that not-knowing would somehow protect me from having to feel them.
" Emery pulled her own cardigan tighter, the night finally starting to cool.
"I don't think it ever actually worked. I think it just delayed the feeling and made it bigger by the time it finally caught up with me. "
Dally nodded slowly, some old recognition crossing her young face.
"My mom used to do that. Not-know things on purpose, I mean.
About my dad, before he left. I was pretty little, but I remember it anyway — the specific quiet she'd get when something was wrong and she didn't want to look at it directly.
" She was quiet for a moment. "I think that's part of why I went tonight.
Why I couldn't just wait around for the adults to decide what I could handle.
I didn't want to end up like that. Quiet and not-knowing and pretending it was fine. "
"Do you? Still love him?"
The directness of it should have startled her more than it did, but something about the late hour, the shared exhaustion, the intimacy of sitting on this porch with a girl who'd risked her own safety trying to understand her family's brokenness, made the honest answer feel like the only possible one.
"Yeah," Emery said quietly. "I think I do. I've been trying not to look at it too directly, because looking at it directly means having to decide what to actually do about it, and that's scarier than almost anything else that's happened this month."
Dally was quiet for a moment, processing that, and when she spoke again her voice had gone thoughtful rather than pointed.
"I used to think love was supposed to be simple.
Like in movies. But everything with you two seems so complicated, and you still ended up here anyway, on this porch, in the middle of the night, after everything.
I don't know. Maybe complicated doesn't mean it's not real.
Maybe it just means it's actually worth something. "
Emery felt something in her chest ache at the wisdom of that, unexpected and unearned from someone so young, and reached over to squeeze Dally's hand.
"You're going to be terrifyingly smart when you're older," she said. "Fair warning to whoever falls for you someday."
Dally laughed, small and tired but real, some of the night's heaviness finally lifting between them.
They sat together a while longer in comfortable silence, and Emery found herself turning over the fragment of information Dally had brought back from the motel, some old professional instinct already starting to work the problem even through her exhaustion.
They're not waiting for Friday.
If Salazar had moved up their timeline, then whatever plan Rhys and Preacher had been quietly assembling was already behind schedule.
And if the club's usual methods — force, negotiation, the slow application of pressure and counter-pressure — weren't fast enough to outpace a crew that had just decided to stop waiting, then maybe the answer wasn't a club solution at all.
Maybe it was something else. Something that used a different kind of leverage entirely.
She sat with the thought for a long moment, letting it take fuller shape, some old professional confidence surfacing through the exhaustion.
She'd spent three years building a business out of nothing but stubbornness, careful planning, and an intimate understanding of how paperwork and scheduling and the quiet machinery of ordinary commerce actually worked.
It occurred to her, sitting on that dark porch with the cicadas loud around her, that the club's world ran almost entirely on force and reputation, and that whatever advantage she might actually bring to this fight probably wasn't going to look like either of those things.
"I need to talk to your uncle," Emery said, standing, an idea starting to take shape with the same clean, structural clarity she brought to solving a stitching problem she'd been circling for hours. "I think I might know a way to buy us time."