Page 142 of The Next Lie

I wanted the words to feel good. They didn’t. They felt like putting you in the ground myself.

Maybe that’s what I was trying to do. Maybe if I bury you first, you don’t get to walk away again. You don’t get to tell me I should’ve stayed dead.

It didn’t work.

You’re still alive.

You’re still my sister.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

NASH

Breakfast ends with Reva walking out and every man at the table pretending he does not want to follow.

I let her go. I don’t want to.

The instinct is there, immediate and ugly. Stand. Catch her before she hits the hall. Put my hand at the back of her neck and keep her where I can see her. Demand she eat. Demand she breathe. Demand she stop using sharp little sentences to cut open wounds she can’t close.

I do none of that. She needs space. I just hate giving it to her.

Cal sits across from the empty chair she left behind, one hand curled around his coffee mug, staring at the pancakes on her plate. His face gives away very little. His knuckles, white and pinched, give away more.

Shiloh stays quiet, which means the situation is serious. Ever watches the doorway like he can track her heartbeat through plaster and wood.

I push back from the table after ten minutes. Cal glances up.

“I’ll find her,” I say.

He sets his mug down with a heavy sigh. “I know where she went.”

So do I. Reva is drawn to the garden.

She has been since the first time she walked out there, long before last night’s disaster with Delia. I have watched her find that space over and over, even if she takes a circuitous route to get there. When the house gets too loud, when the men in it get to be too many, when the past crowds her hard enough to show in her shoulders, she heads for the part of the property that can’t decide whether it wants to be cultivated or wild.

It suits her.

Cal goes one way; I go another. I’m not sure where he’s headed, or if he’ll find her before I do. I only know where I’m going as I take a meandering path toward the garden, still intent on giving her a little space before approaching her.

The garden beyond the pool is all old brick paths, hedges clipped into obedience, benches tucked under moss-draped oaks, and unruly green pressing at every clean edge. Roses climb ironwork. Ferns and hostas crowd the bases of trees. The marsh waits beyond the low wall, flat and quiet and patiently waiting its turn.

If you look hard enough, there’s probably a gator peering through the marsh grass somewhere. I’ve grown used to the feel of eyes on me.

I step through the side door and stop before the path bends.

Cal beat me to her.

I see them through the space between two hedges. Reva sits on the stone bench near the fountain, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. She has changed out of the shorts she wore at breakfast and into jeans, but she still has on the black shirt. Her hair is loose around her face, and the fingers of one hand plucks those damned rubber bands around her other wrist with an endless rhythm.

Cal stands a few feet away with his hands in his pockets, giving her the careful distance of a man who has been asked not to come closer and is trying his best to listen.

I should leave, give them their privacy.

I stay.

“You don’t get to decide Delia’s dead because she hurt you,” Cal is saying.

Reva lifts her head. “Watch me.”