designed to make the rest of the world regret that they had ever messed with him.
Or maybe Luke was just remembering what it had been like for him.
As he looked at the graffiti now, he wondered how that boy he’d been in his other life could have done something as stupid as this. He wished he could go back and talk to him. He would tell him there was life after high school, life after this town, life after the hell he’d gone through with his father. He’d tell him he didn’t need to do crap like this to get back at the world, that inflicting senseless revenge on nameless victims was only going to leave him feeling even more hollow and lost than he already did.
But knowing the kid he’d been back then, would he have listened?
He remembered how he used to wish he’d been born the kind of guy a girl like Shannon would want. Yet with every sarcastic word he spoke, every angry move he made, he proved to the world he was just the opposite. If he’d been her mother, what would he have done? Welcomed him with open arms?
For maybe the first time, Luke saw himself from the point of view of people who’d watched the stupid, destructive things he’d done as a kid. And he hated what he saw. How was all that supposed to simply vanish from Shannon’s mind, or Loucinda’s, for that matter? And as he looked at the graffiti, he figured nothing about the past was leaving Myrna Schumaker’s mind anytime soon, either.
Maybe it was time he did something about that.
After Luke left, Shannon called Eve and told her she was coming over. She endured her sister’s protest that it was too late and went anyway, because she wasn’t going to be able to sleep with this on her mind. Ten minutes later, she climbed the outside steps that led to Eve’s apartment over the Red Barn. Eve came to the door wearing a T-shirt and pajama pants covered in Winnie the Poohs.
Lucky, her big bruiser of a tomcat, was lying upside down on her purple shag rug, looking like a prizefighter who’d hit the mat in an uncontested knockout. Three years ago, Rita told Eve she had a tomcat so tough he’d fallen twenty-two feet out of a peach picker he’d stowed away in and lived to meow another day. Eve was sold on the spot. For her, it was all about the story that came with whatever she collected. Antiques, animals—it was all the same to her.
Shannon came inside and sat on Eve’s sofa. Brynn, Eve’s Welsh corgi, jumped up beside her, and she stroked the dog’s head. Five years ago, Eve had leaped out of her car to rescue her from the median of Interstate 35 with cars zooming by at seventy miles per hour. Amazingly, neither of them had ended up as road kill.
“Sorry to come over so late,” Shannon said.
“What’s new about that?”
“Hey, I don’t do it very often.”
“Only when you have a problem you can’t make logical sense of and you’re desperate to talk to somebody about it. You won’t talk to Tasha, because she keeps asking you what you think, like she’s some kind of new-age shrink. But if you knew what you thought, you wouldn’t have to ask her. So you’re stuck with me.”
In some weird way, that actually made sense to Shannon.
“Mom came to my apartment tonight,” she said.
“Oh, God. Does this have to be about Mom?”
“What else do I complain about?”
Eve sighed. “Go on.”
“Luke was there.”
Eve grinned. “Luke was at your apartment?”
“Will you get that look off your face? I told him he could watch a baseball game at my apartment since he doesn’t have a TV.” And then we ended up in bed together and it was amazing. A few more minutes, and it would have been even more amazing. “And then Mom showed up.”
Eve’s eyes flew open wide. “While Luke was there? And you lived to tell the tale?”
“Trust me—she didn’t stay long.”
“Good. That way you and Luke could get back to what you were doing, which sure as hell wasn’t watching a baseball game.”
Shannon’s eyebrows flew up. “How did you know that?”
Eve grinned. “I didn’t.”
“God, I hate you.” Shannon slumped with frustration. “We didn’t get back to anything. He left.”
“Left? Why?”
“Because I acted like it was a real problem that he was there when Mom came over. And Mom didn’t help things by the way she acted.”
“Well, then.