Страница 32 из 88
“Was it worth it?” Whiz wanted to know. “You’re go
“They can’t ground me that long,” Co
“But was it worth it? You know”—and here Whiz looked around as if under surveillance and dropped his voice to a near whisper—“S-E-X?”
As much as she wanted to drop-kick Whiz into a garbage chute most days, Co
“We didn’t have S-E-X,” she informed him. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Well, that’s good. ’Cause Mom was really worried about that.”
“Dad wasn’t?”
“Dad was…” Whiz hesitated. “Never mind.”
“Come on. Tell me.”
Whiz shook his head defiantly.
“God, it’s more of his black/white crap, isn’t it? It’s not the nineteen-sixties. It’s not like when his parents were growing up or even when he was growing up. It’s—”
“That’s not it,” Whiz said quietly.
“What’s not it?”
“The black-and-white thing. The racial stuff.”
Co
“What do you mean? Ever since I started dating Jazz, it’s been ‘white men this’ and ‘black women that,’ and ‘Sally Hemmings’ and—”
Whiz shook his head. “He doesn’t care. He said, ‘She can date a whole platoon of white boys, just not that one.’ ”
Co
Whiz rolled his eyes. “Jeez, Co
Actually… no.
“It’s the serial-killer thing.”
Well, of course it was the serial-killer thing. Her father didn’t trust Jazz. So typical. No matter how much Jazz had proven himself—
“And,” Whiz went on, “he told Mom that the idea of you getting hurt scares him so much that he can’t even talk to you about it. And all the race stuff is just the only way he can think of to keep you guys apart without thinking about you…”
Without thinking of me raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered by my own boyfriend. Ah, crap. She couldn’t find it in her heart to stay angry at her dad. Not anymore.
“Jesus, Whiz. Talking to you is better than yoga sometimes.”
“Don’t take—”
“—the Lord’s name in vain. I know. Sorry.”
“It isn’t go
“What’s that?”
Whiz swallowed. “Jazz isn’t go
Aw, man… As big of a pain in the butt as her little brother could be, she knew he loved her in that stunted way little brothers have. It killed her to see the conflicted pain in his eyes as he asked. She saw more than merely her brother’s concern; she saw Dad’s fear reflected there, too. All her life, her father had been so powerful, loomed so large, that she’d never been able to imagine him afraid of anything. Not even Jazz. Not even something…
“No one’s go
She kissed him on the exact center of the top of his head and said it again, this time louder, loud enough to convince herself, too.
CHAPTER 23
For the first time in recent memory, Jazz had the run of the house. After breakfast, Gramma had fallen into one of her periodic obsessions with Grampa’s grave. Sometimes she believed that he’d risen from the grave—“Like Jesus and Bugs Bu
But Aunt Samantha cheerfully volunteered to take Gramma, meaning that Jazz was alone in the house without having to worry about his grandmother. He almost didn’t know how to act. It was so quiet—true quiet, without the foreboding of a potential Gramma eruption lurking. Maybe I should call Co
It was an automatic thought, and it made him pensive almost immediately. He should call Co
Oh, you could make her talk to you….
No. Shut up, Billy. Not Co
He meandered around the house, straightening things here and there. Inspired, he started throwing away some of the old junk that his grandmother had accumulated over the years. The serial-killer pack-rat tendency ran strong in the Dent genetics, and Gramma would never tolerate Jazz throwing things away while she was around. But with her gone for the day, he could do some cleaning and she’d be none the wiser. It’s not like she was lucid enough to memorize her piles of crap.
He thought about Co
And then… pushing her away, falling backward onto the floor, lust twisted to panic, to fear.
Yeah. How could he fix that? How could he erase in Co
He hauled the garbage outside and set it by the mailbox for pickup, then returned to the house, where he wheeled his suitcase into the spare room. He didn’t blame Samantha for not wanting to sleep here. The room had lain unused for close to two decades, its surfaces gray and textured with dust. More than that, though, the room seemed to vibrate, ever so slightly out of sync with the rest of the house, the rest of the universe, really. As though something fundamental and primitive and crucial had broken here, and never been patched.
Billy’s room. Billy’s bed. Jazz didn’t have to wonder what Billy had dreamed and fantasized, lying awake at night. He knew all too well—Billy had written his fantasies in the blood and screams of i
He dusted a bit, then unpacked. He needed clean clothes, so he went across the hall to his room. True to her word, Samantha had hung a sheet over the wall of Dear Old Dad’s victims. Jazz found himself liking his aunt more and more. Wouldn’t most people seeing them for the first time—most normal people—have taken down the pictures? Co
Gramma thought they were Santa’s elves.
He fired up his computer and checked his e-mail. Other than the usual spam and porn links from Howie (delete, delete, delete…), there was nothing, which meant that no one had figured out this e-mail address yet. Good.
On the desk lay two sheets of paper. Photocopies of evidence from the sheriff’s office. The first one was the letter Billy had left at Melissa Hoover’s house: