cat, Bibby, with a hairball, and then she concentrated on breathing short and slow, in through the nose and out, lips clamped shut.
“Ka-boom!” said Thalia. She stood up off the sofa, abandoning the snoring Barb, and came toward Laurel. “What was that for?”
Laurel poured another, her hands shaking so hard that rum splashed out of the jigger, running over her fingers and puddling on the counter.
She waited for that threshold again, not speaking.
Thalia leaned across the low counter toward Laurel. She had one of Daddy’s expressions on her face, that bright, foreign bird-eyed look, her head cocked sideways. “You’re doing Uncle Petey-Boy,” she said in a tone of wonderment.
Laurel put the next shot down her throat. This time not throwing up was an act of superhuman will. She bent at the waist, coiling around her flaming center, turning her head to press her cheek against the cool, rum-wet tile.
Under the burn, she felt a faint shock of recognition: She was drinking like Petey, truly the most dedicated alcoholic in DeLop. He drank raw brush whiskey with a bored efficiency that implied putting home brew into his stomach was his job. Now Laurel felt like sending him a thank-you note, and a giggle escaped her mouth at the thought of one of her monogrammed linen cards wending its way to DeLop in a wax-sealed envelope. Inside, she’d have written in her tidy hand, Thank you so very much! Without you, I never would have known how the business end of necessary drinking should be handled.
“It’s a pretty good Uncle Petey-Boy,” Thalia said, her voice gentle. “But I think you need to stop now.”
“Don’t talk,” Laurel repeated. With Thalia talking, it was harder to keep picturing Petey-Boy, shirtless and pounding back shots, reading her note with his man breasts hanging down in small, sorry triangles.
“Bug. Set the jigger down and back slowly away.”
“I said please don’t dammit fuck fuck talk.”
Laurel heard herself from such a distance that she could not be sure, but she thought she might be yelling. She was so loud that Barb DuFresne made a snorking noise and stirred without waking. It was too late. Thalia had spoken again, and that thing Laurel was trying so hard not to look at was coming through the glass, coming right at her, coming as if called.
I’ll handle it myself, Thalia had said. I always do. Then her hand made itself into a gun. Point and shoot. Close your eyes, baby.
What if it had been Thalia, all those years ago, in the deep green woods of Alabama? What if Thalia had been “handling it herself”? Had Thalia shot Marty?
And still Thalia was talking.
“Did you say the very bad F-word, Buglet? You? Twice? What’s happening?”
Laurel, her face pressed into the cool counter, closed her eyes. She saw the deer step out into the road.
Yours, breathed Uncle Marty, moving out of Daddy’s line of sight. He also moved out of Thalia’s. They could sit in the blind all day and not have a deer amble up and hand them such an easy shot. Maybe Marty meant to give the shot to the least experienced hunter, their favorite girl, the one who’d bagged her first buck only last year.
The gun was moving in Daddy’s hands.
Close your eyes, baby.
Laurel’s lids dropped obediently, so she had no way of knowing if Daddy was bringing the gun down to aim, or passing it to Thalia. They kept a necessary quiet; they were upwind, where scent would not betray them, but sound could set the deer running.
Had Daddy held his gun out to Thalia, silently asking? Her answer would have been a nod, a reaching. Laurel could imagine the gun cradled properly in her sister’s thin arms. And there was Marty. Ahead. Standing by the road.
Laurel heard the first shot. A miss. The deer crashing away. She kept her eyes closed. Get him, Daddy said, and then Marty said something back. Was he speaking to Daddy? Or to Thalia? The gun went off again, and still Laurel waited. When at last she looked, the gun was lying on the dirt trail, abandoned, and Daddy was bent over his brother’s body, trying to call him back.
Laurel watched her sister fight to lift her heavy hand and stuff her thumb into her mouth: the unbreakable Thalia, wiped down to toddler level.
“It shouldn’t matter,” Laurel said now, out loud. Daddy or Thalia, her family’s complicit silence would have been the same. Marty had the short eyes, and they’d shot him. But it