anymore.” My conversation with Mama eased the last strands of those worries. “But back then? It was always on my mind. Oddball Delilah, sticking out like a sore thumb amid the rest of you.”
Sam shakes her head. “Hell, Dee. They picked you. I was an unexpected arrival; they had to love me.”
My laugh is unhinged. “I can’t believe this. All this time you were jealous of our parents’ love for me, and I was jealous of the same?”
In our mother’s cheery kitchen, Sam and I stare at each other, and then she starts to snicker. “I guess we were.”
We both laugh; it isn’t really in amusement. I’m too battered, but it feels good to let it go. Sam finishes with a shaking breath and then sobers. Tentatively, she reaches out, and I accept her hug. She smells of Chanel and cigarettes that I know she still smokes on the sly. “I’m sorry, Dee. So sorry.”
“You hurt me.” I still hurt.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. I know she means it. But it doesn’t feel like enough.
“And you let Macon take the fall.”
Her nose wrinkles. Red faced and teary eyed, she’s still beautiful. Still guarded. “He insisted. The night he dumped me, he said he’d do that for me because of all we’d been through together, but he was done with the Baker sisters.”
It wasn’t exactly what Macon said to me. In Sam’s version, Macon was protecting her, not me. This again. The same old manipulations and twisted truths. I pull out of her embrace. “You should have told me.”
“I know.” Sam worries her bottom lip.
“What’s done is done.”
She brightens at that. “And hey, I returned and brought the watch back as promised.”
Does she want a cookie for doing the right thing? Inside, I grow a bit more numb. She’s my sister. But the person she’s become is the absolute worst version of her.
She won’t meet my eyes. “It was stupid taking the watch. No one would touch it . . .” She trails off with a strangled sound, realizing what she’s said.
I stare at her, disappointment so keen that I can’t seem to move. She tried to sell the watch. “What’s going on with you, Sam? Why did you need that much money?”
The gentle sweep of her jaw lifts. “I just did.”
“Three hundred thousand worth? Why?”
When she finally turns my way, her eyes are hard. “I have a bit of a gambling addiction. Sometimes I run low on funds.”
She could have knocked me over with a feather. Sam smirks. “You should see your face, Dee. So shocked.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“No,” she snaps. “It’s not. At any rate, I had a good run and no longer need money.”
A good run? My sister is a gambler, and I never noticed. What the hell has she gotten herself into? “Sammy . . .”
“It’s my business, so don’t go getting all Saint Delilah and try to fix it.”
My impulse is to snap back, tell her off. But I’m suddenly weary. I don’t want to fight her. I just want to get on with my life in peace. “Don’t worry, Sam. I learned my lesson. You fight your own battles now. I’m officially done.”
The clock on the wall ticks loud and clear as she stares at me. Some emotion passes over her face—regret or worry, I can’t tell—then she pulls in a breath and straightens her shoulders. “I’ve learned my lesson too. No more stealing for me.”
She says it like a joke that I’m expected to laugh at. I can’t. It worries me that she’s being so glib about her problem. It worries me that despite her claims of this good run, she might still owe someone an ungodly amount of cash. How did she pay it off without using Macon’s watch? But I hold my tongue. If I’m going to stick to my word and stay out of her business, I have to start now.
“Delilah,” Sam begins after a moment. “This thing with Saint—tell me it isn’t serious.”
I move to the end of the counter and wipe away a water ring. “I know he was your boyfriend during school. And I wouldn’t have gone there with him if it wasn’t . . .” I take a deep breath and face her. “Yes, this is serious. I care about him.”
Pity fills her eyes. “Oh, Dee, you should know better. Saint isn’t capable of love.”
“That’s not true . . .”
“Did he tell you he loves you?” Her tone implies she already knows he didn’t.