21. Reva
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
REVA
Homer hates the harness.
That’s not a guess. It is a complete philosophical position he has adopted with his whole tiny body.
He takes two steps across the patio, stops, stares at nothing, then flops onto his side like he has been shot by a sniper.
The leash goes slack in my hand. His back legs kick once.
His tail lashes. Then he lies there, dramatic and orange, waiting for me to understand the full scale of his suffering.
“I’m sorry life is so hard,” I tell him.
He blinks at me.
“But you’re doing great.”
He rolls onto his back and attacks the strap near his chest with all four paws.
“I’m proud of you, Speed-Ro, even if Deacon is an idiot for putting that thing on you. We’ll take it off when we go inside.”
The pool lights glow beneath the water, throwing pale blue shadows across the stone patio. The garden sits beyond it, dark and damp, the marsh farther out. Blackwood House rises behind me with its windows lit and its people inside pretending any of this qualifies as a normal evening.
I should go back in, but I don’t want to go back in. Not with all of them in there. Deacon, Delia, Cal.
Deacon’s kiss still lives on my lips.
That is the problem. One of several, apparently, but that’s the immediate one, the one most impossible to ignore. My lower lip is tender where he bit it. Every time I touch it with my tongue, my stomach does this stupid, traitorous drop.
I’ll give you time.
A little time.
Not a lot.
He said it like a threat. Worse, he said it like he meant it. Like there’s this outcome waiting for us, and I’m the only one still pretending not to see it.
I hate that.
I also hate that I stood there holding a kitten leash and let him walk away without throwing something at his head.
Growth, maybe. Possibly brain damage. I wasn’t going to throw the kitten, so not sure there’s much of a distinction.
Homer makes a strangled little noise and flops to his other side.
“Same, Speed-Ro, same” I say.
The glass door opens behind me. I turn, already half expecting it to be Deacon, coming back to continue ruining my nervous system.
It’s Delia.
My hand tightens around the leash.
She steps onto the patio and slides the door shut behind her. The house light catches on the rosary marks at her wrist before she pulls her sleeve down. She sees me notice, and her mouth tightens.
For a second, neither of us speaks.
I used to know every expression on her face. I knew when she was lying, when she was about to cry, when she was going to steal the last cookie and pretend she had no idea where it went. I knew the sound of her feet on the stairs. I knew the way she breathed when she was asleep.
Now she stands ten feet away, and I can’t tell whether she wants to hug me or push me into the pool.
Based on the last twenty-four hours, I’m betting on the pool.
Homer gets to his feet, takes one step toward her, then tips over again.
Delia looks down at him.
“What is that?”
“My cat.”
“I can see that. Why is he on a string?”
“He’s in training.”
“For what?”
“Emotional support cat. He’s still in training.”
“He looks like—” She breaks off.
“Mr. T. I know.”
Her eyes flick to mine. For one second, I see it. A tiny crack. Recognition, maybe. The shape of a laugh that dies before it can make sound.
Then she looks toward the pool.
“You should go back inside.”
I almost laugh. “Amazing. You really do fit right in here.”
Her gaze cuts back. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means everyone in this house has a favorite version of telling me where to stand and how to grieve.”
“I’m not telling you where to stand.”
“You literally came outside to tell me to go back inside.” The leash swings as I gesture.
“I’m telling you to leave New Orleans altogether.”
I stare at her. “Excuse me?”
She crosses her arms. “You heard me. Go back to Chicago.”
“That’s not happening.”
“You’re a little idiot if you don’t.”
“Why? Because you said so?”
“Because you don’t belong here.”
My throat tightens before I can stop it. I hate that she sees it. I hate that her face does not soften.
“I’m your sister, Dee,” I say. “Whether you like it or not.”
“No.” Her voice goes flat. “You were my sister.”
The patio seems to tilt half an inch under my feet. Homer chews the leash near my shoe, oblivious to the fact that my heart just took a direct hit.
Delia keeps going. “I don’t know what you came looking for, Reva, but you won’t find it here. I’m not that girl anymore. I’m not your lost half. I’m not your reunion story. I’m not going to cry in your arms and make all of this mean something beautiful.”
I snap the rubber bands on my wrist, hard, one right after another. “That’s not what I asked for.”
“Yes, you did. Maybe not out loud, but you came here with those eyes.”
“What eyes?”
“The ones that keep trying to dig up a child who is dead.”
Anger saves me from the hurt.
I reel in Homer, scoop him up, and march to the sliding door. He complains loudly as I set him inside on the cool floor. His harness leash trails behind him like the world’s saddest parade ribbon.
“Stay,” I tell him.
He immediately bats at the glass.
“Great. Boundaries are going well for both of us.”
I slide the door shut and turn back to Delia.
Her eyes narrow. “What are you doing?”
“Removing the innocent.”
She snorts. “Orange cats are never innocent.”
“What the hell happened to you?”
She exhales through her nose and pinches the bridge. “Reva.”
“No.” I walk toward her. “You do not get to come out here, stab me with I’m not your sister anymore, and then say my name like you’re the one being reasonable.”
Her chin lifts.
Mine does too.
We are closer now. Too close, probably. I can see a faint scar near her left eyebrow where she must have been cut at some point. I want to ask who did it. I want to know if she cried. I want to know who held her afterward.
I hate that I want anything from her.
“You need to go home,” she says.
“I don’t have a home!” I don’t mean to scream the words at her but they wrest themselves from my throat, angry and raw. “You were my home! You and Mom and Dad! My home is gone.”
Something flickers across her face.
“You made a new one,” she says. “You had a home in Chicago; it was a good one.”
I shake my head. “Is that what you tell yourself to make yourself feel better? That was a life built on lies.”
“You had Cal.”
“Like you had Deacon?”
Her jaw tightens.
Oh. She doesn’t like that.
“Is that what this is about?” I ask. “You’re mad I showed up and now everyone has to rearrange their secrets?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You keep saying that, and yet no one seems interested in informing me.”
“We’re trying to fucking keep you alive.”
I laugh. “God, you really are one of them.”
She steps toward me. “You think this is a game because you survived one bad night and grew up somewhere safe.”
“One bad night?”
The words come out too quiet.
Delia hears it. Her eyes change, but she does not take it back.
My hands curl at my sides. “Our parents were murdered.”
“I was there.”
“I hid in a closet.”
“I know.”
“I thought you were dead, Dee. I watched them carry away a child-sized body bag.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t stand there and say one bad night to me like I misplaced a shoe.”
Her lips press together, and a muscle moves in her cheek.
I point toward the house. “You think I had some sweet little life because Cal made sure there was food in the fridge and the locks worked. Fine. I had school and a job and an apartment and a man who loved me enough to lie every single day. Is that the life you mean?”
Her voice drops. “You were safe.”
“I was alone.”
“You were alive.”
“So were you.”
She looks away.
I keep going because apparently I am my own worst enemy. “And I don’t know what happened to you. I don’t know what they made you do. I don’t know why you have that tattoo or that scar or why you look at me like I’m the one who ruined everything by showing up breathing.”
“You did ruin things.”
The sentence slices clean through my tirade, and I stop. Delia’s face pales a little, like even she hears how it sounds.
I nod slowly. “Nice.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Sure, you did.”
“No.” She steps closer. “I only meant you don’t understand what happens when a buried thing gets up and walks back into the room.”
I laugh, and the sound is bitter and chokes. “I think I might understand more than you think.”
“You understand nothing.”
“I understand that Mom and Dad would be fucking sick if they could see you now.”
Her face goes dead still, and the air between us changes. The thought crosses my mind that maybe I’ve said enough. Maybe I should stop.
I can’t, though. Something pushes more words out of me, the awareness, maybe, that I’d drown on them if I tried to hold them in.
“They would be disappointed in you,” I say, and my voice shakes because I mean to hurt her now. “Especially Mom.”
Delia huffs out a sound that is almost a laugh and almost pain.
It is ugly. It scares me.
“Do me a favor and don’t talk to me about our mother.”
“Why? Because you were born thirteen minutes before me and you remember her better? Because the Syndicate gave you a more complete trauma education?”
Her hand moves so fast I barely register it. One finger hits the center of my chest and pushes, hard enough to make me step back.
“You don’t know what I remember.”
I slap her hand away. “Well, why don’t you tell me?”
“I don’t think I will.”
“Why?”
“Because I am trying to keep you safe, you stubborn little idiot.”
The words slam me with old muscle memory.
Little idiot.
She used to call me that when I climbed too high in the magnolia tree behind our house. When I tried to jump off the porch steps with an umbrella. When I put glitter in the ceiling fan because I wanted to make weather.
My chest cracks, and goddamn but I hate her for it.
I shove her. Both palms. Hard.
“I don’t need you to keep me safe.”
She stumbles one step, catches herself, and looks at me like I have slapped her. Then she shoves me back.
“You obviously have no idea what you need and don’t need.”
I grab her wrist. She twists out of it.
I am not sure who moves next. Maybe both of us. One second we are standing like adults on a patio beside an expensive pool, and the next my hand is tangled in her sleeve while hers is in my hair.
It is not elegant.
It is not tactical.
Ever would be horrified by my stance. Nash would call us uncivilized. Shiloh would probably critique the drama and then applaud the commitment.
Delia yanks my hair. I gasp and grab hers in retaliation. She makes a furious sound that is so familiar I nearly let go.
Nearly.
“You always did that,” I snap.
“What?”
“Pulled my hair when you were losing.”
“I was seven, and I’m not losing any damn thing.”
“You were violent for seven, and trust, you’re losing.”
“You bit me!”
“You deserved it.”
She hooks a foot behind mine.
I stumble, drag her with me, and we both slam into one of the lounge chairs. It skids backward with a horrible scrape across the stone.
Inside, Homer launches himself against the glass with a tiny, outraged thump. Delia glances toward him, and I shove her shoulder.
She shoves mine. We hit the low table in sync, sending a decorative bowl of lemons rolling across the patio. One drops into the pool with a soft plunk. The absurdity of it almost makes me laugh.
Then Delia says, “You should have stayed dead.”
Silence. Even she freezes. My whole body goes cold.
Her eyes widen a fraction. “Reva—”
I hit her.
Not well. Not hard enough to do real damage. More of a slap than a punch, wild and open-handed, fueled by every dead year between us.
Her head turns with it. For half a second, I think she will cry.
Then she tackles me. I hear a rip, and realize it’s her dress.
We go down hard on the wet stone near the edge of the pool, rolling, grabbing, cursing. My elbow bangs against the coping. Pain shoots up my arm. Delia gets a knee under her and tries to pin me. I twist, shove, catch her sleeve and pull. Somehow we get back to our knees, and then our feet.
Somewhere behind the glass, Homer loses his mind.
The sliding door opens.
A man shouts my name.
I don’t know which one, and I don’t care. All I see is red. All I hear is rage. All I feel is pain.
Delia grabs my wrist. I grab the front of her dress. We are both breathing hard, both soaked with sweat, both too angry to stop now that stopping would mean feeling what we just said.
Her foot slips.
Mine follows.
There is one suspended second, our hands clutching each other’s arms, where we both realize what’s about to happen.
Her eyes meet mine.
We are seven years old.
We are twenty-two.
We are dead. Alive. Furious.
Then we go over the edge together.
The pool closes over my head with a cold blue shock, and my last thought before the water swallows us is that Delia still fights exactly like my sister used to fight.