A Smile as Sweet as Poison (22 page)

Hazel flicked up her hands.
Like what?

“If I’d seen you together at Mizzou, if I knew why you broke up… What did you say to her?”

You don’t know
. Hazel winced. “Nothing. She just can’t leave well enough alone.” A thought lanced through her, slackening the muscles in her face. “She didn’t invite him to dinner, too, did she?”

“No, no.” Rhonda smiled with half a mouth, her features half lost to the shadows of the nursery. “She’d think it was rude. This is still my house.”

You sure about that?
After all, Mrs. Whitley had invited herself.

Hazel peered down at the crib. “Bea might just be the quietest baby I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, I knew she’d be asleep.” Rhonda shrugged. “Figured you needed a second to regroup… Ready to jump back into the frying pan?”

What other choice did Hazel have?

* * * *

Dinner was a slow-paced, counter-clockwise cycling of platters and bowls, bottles traded from hand to hand and cutlery clicking softly against porcelain. Hazel spent it with a knot in her throat, waiting for the veil to be pulled off her parents’ faces and the razor-sharp fangs in their mouths exposed.

As the meal wound down without any bloodshed over Rhonda’s spotless hardwood boards, she began to hope that might not happen at all. They made it to dessert—baked Alaska with chocolate syrup drizzled on top—before the other penny dropped.

“That accent,” her father started with a sharp glance at Ward, “doesn’t strike me as very west coast.”

“West coast of South Africa.”

Tone down the sass
, Hazel wanted to beg. Instead, she kicked Ward’s ankle under the table. He had no trouble hiding it when he wanted to and Hazel didn’t buy that he’d let the Afrikaans slip through if he wasn’t looking to make a point.

“You’re a long way from home,” Mr. Whitley observed.

“Oh, this
is
home. Other than the accent, I’m thoroughly red, white and blue.”

“And you, Dylan?” Mrs. Whitley joined in, a polite smile on her lips. “Where do you hail from?”

It wasn’t his accent that prompted the question. Hazel felt her face heat and suddenly wished she could disappear under the table.

This was the Midwest and racial mixing was still a big deal. Sadie sometimes joked about being the only Chinese girl in a hundred mile radius. It didn’t seem so funny now.

“Oakland,” Dylan replied, returning the smile.

“And your parents?”

“Likewise.” Only the tension around his eyes belied a certain degree of annoyance.

Hazel cleared her throat. “These peas are excellent, Rhonda. I don’t know what you put in them to—”

“So what exactly are your intentions here, gentlemen?” Mrs. Whitley asked, sitting back in her high-backed chair. Her wrists were propped against the table, claws hovering an inch or two above the polished wood. Tension radiated from her posture.

Hazel nearly choked on her wine. “Ma, come on!”

The glare shot her way would’ve reduced her to tears only a few years back. “Please don’t interrupt, Hazel.”

“You can’t just ask something like that and expect an answer—”

“Well, we
were
hoping to fly Hazel to St. Louis for the reunion after this,” Ward replied lightly, “but if you have other ideas, we’re all ears.”

Mrs. Whitley narrowed her slate gray eyes. “Did I hear you say you went to some prestigious university?”

“You may have.”

“Then don’t play the fool, Mr. Parrish. I’d like to know what you think you’re doing stringing my daughter along after everything she’s been through,” her voice shook, fists curled tight against the table’s edge. “Is that the reason you’re pursuing her?”

“Mom!” Hazel gasped.

“Is
what
the reason?” Dylan asked.

Silence settled over the table, as fragile as the wine glasses Rhonda had trotted out so they could enjoy Ward’s gift.

Then Mrs. Whitley spoke up, “You haven’t told them?” The question was meant for Hazel, but her gaze had strayed down to the table. Two spots of color bloomed high on her cheeks. “Is that fair, Hazel?”

“Maybe I just assumed that not everyone would judge me for having sex.” It wasn’t what Hazel had meant to say, but once the words were out, she couldn’t force them back into her mouth. “Look at me. Ma,
look at me
.”

“Hazel, that’s enough.” Her father rarely intervened between them. Hazel had no memory of being scolded by him—ignored, yes, treated as though she was invisible for being born a girl, often. But ever since she had left college, he’d barely looked her in the eye.

She met his eyes. “Is it so embarrassing to you? I had a boyfriend. We had sex… Rhonda and Buddy had a baby, for Christ’s sake. Do you think that was divine conception?”

“Your brother is married,” Mr. Whitley snapped.

“And before that, they were little angels, were they?” Hazel ran a hand over her mouth, surprised to find that she was laughing. Her fraying nerves threatened to snap. She felt as though she was walking a fine line between hysteria and clarity. She couldn’t back down. “How many times did you walk in on them, Ma? I know how many I—”

“Damn it, Hazel.” Her father struck the table with his open palm, plates and cutlery rattling in echo. “Buddy and Rhonda didn’t flaunt what they did in everyone’s faces!”

“And you think
I
did?”

Mrs. Whitley looked up from the table at last. “What else do you call that…that pornographic filth?”

A mistake
. Hazel’s dinner rose up in her gut. She blocked out the memory of the silky-smooth twist of the cuffs around her wrists as best she could, but there were other details she couldn’t force out of her thoughts—
his
voice, for instance, or the tender scrape of his thumb on her cheek as he brushed away the tears.

“Why don’t you ask Malcolm?” Hazel rasped and slid back her chair. She didn’t ask to be excused. Her eyes stung with unshed tears, but she wouldn’t give her mother the satisfaction of seeing her cry. “He knows. He was
right there.
”

She made it to the porch before she doubled over against the rail, gulping down air in hopes of easing the tightness in her chest. Yet every breath made the ache worse and soon her hands and feet were numbing, too, blood rushing to her face as she struggled to remain upright.

In vain, Hazel anchored her arm around the trellis that separated the porch from the front yard.

“Hazel!” Dylan’s voice echoed behind her.

She made a valiant attempt to turn. Bad idea. Her vision blurred at once, breaths coming in sharp, dizzying inhales. She thought she saw Ward rush forward to catch her as she went down, but she struck the ground all the same.

“Out of the way,” someone said.

“Is it asthma?” Dylan asked, increasingly frantic.

“I didn’t know she had asthma!” Ward shouted back.

“For God’s sake, both of you,
move!
”

Through the blue-black fog steadily creeping across her vision, Hazel recognized her mother’s stern features. The light from the foyer fixture limned her blond hair in gold. “On your side,” she told Hazel briskly. “Keep it together.”

“Should we call an ambulance?”
Dylan
.

“Fuck, where’s my phone…?”
Ward
.

Mrs. Whitley ignored them, taking Hazel’s hands in both of hers and helping her onto her front. “Keep it together. You’re a Whitley, Hazel. It takes more than a panic attack to put us on our backs. Are you listening to me?”

Her whole face numb and loose blonde curls drooping into her eyes, Hazel found herself nodding.

“Rhonda, do you have Xanax in the house?” she heard her mother ask.

“Yeah, in the bathroom—”

“Half a tablet. And a glass of water… You never could swallow medicine dry.”

I remember.
Hazel swallowed back a sob. If only she didn’t remember the shouting and the stabbing in the back, if only what came after was just a bad dream.

* * * *

The bed Hazel woke in was not her own.

She knew it by the smell of the pillows and the shadows on the wall. The patterned bed sheets were final tip off. This wasn’t her bedroom back in LA, or the one she’d slept in at her mother’s house. It certainly wasn’t Dylan’s. Pushing herself upright took some effort and caused far too much noise. By the time she had swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, a figure was standing in the doorway, grasping the frame with both hands.

“You’re up.” Ward sighed, clearly relieved.

“What time is it?”

“Four or five.” He shrugged, releasing the wall and venturing into the room as if to help her stand.

Hazel brushed him off. Her head was killing her. “We’re still at Rhonda’s.”

“Your mom said it was probably wiser to let you rest here. Rhonda agreed.”

“And you didn’t want to argue with two women?”

Despite his smile, Ward’s gaze remained hooded with worry. “You know how spineless I can be… How’re you feeling?”

Like I made a fool of myself in front of my extended family.
Hazel rolled her shoulders as she stood from the bed, joints creaking. “We should go.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“We can have an awkward breakfast somewhere else.” Rhonda endured enough drama for one night. She and Buddy had their own family to think of. “Is Dylan—?”

“Outside,” Ward said. “Said he needed a smoke.”

Their eyes met and Hazel suddenly wished she’d stayed seated a moment longer. She couldn’t hide from the things she’d said over dinner. Smashed plates and ugly insults would’ve made less of an impact.

In trying to hurt her parents, she had exposed the rotten, messy parts of herself to Dylan—the one thing she’d worked so hard to avoid.

Her rubbery knees threatened to give way. “You told him?”

Ward shook his head. “He asked me if I knew what you meant. I couldn’t lie. But I said nothing else, no details—”

“No,” Hazel agreed. Those had to come from her, as a prelude to the inevitable end. She toed her sneakers on as best she could. “Well… no point delaying.”

Ward caught her by the elbow as she made to wobble out of the room. “If it goes badly…” He couldn’t seem to finish the thought.

Hazel waited and waited, hoping to hear him say something sweet or forgiving. Nothing came. “If it goes badly,” she echoed, “we’ll figure it out.”

Ward might have helped her keep the secret, but she was its architect. This whole mess began and ended with her.

The floorboards creaked underfoot with every shambling step. Hazel didn’t spur her feet. She would’ve stayed in her room and wallowed quite gladly if not for the knowledge that she owed Dylan an explanation. She had done enough harm in Dunby, anyway. Maybe there was some poetic justice in ending whatever they had in this town, a way to somehow contain the blast radius of her numerous bad calls.

She saw Dylan through the kitchen window, which had been left slightly ajar. His broad shoulders were slumped beneath a white shirt, smoke billowing into the cold night air from the glowing red point of his cigarette.

Hazel shivered as she stepped onto the back porch. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“Old habits,” Dylan replied, noncommittal. After a moment’s hesitation, he held out the cigarette, filter first.

She took it wordlessly and filled her lungs with nicotine. It helped. Nothing was eased, nothing was made any better by the tangy flavor lingering in the back of her throat, but somehow it helped.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Hazel looked out onto the darkened garden, tilting her head back as her gaze found the old, gnarled elm at the rear and traveled beyond it. In LA, there would’ve been too many lights from cars, and billboards, and street lamps to see the stars, but out here in the middle of small town America, the sky was perforated with millions of beacons streaming through the pitch dark canvas.

“I was afraid you’d judge me,” she confessed.

“Is that how little you think of me?” Dylan asked softly. It would’ve been better if he raged and shouted. “You told Ward.”

“She didn’t,” Ward said, equally low.

Hazel turned. He was standing on the threshold, hands in his pockets, lovely and cold, just like Dylan. And just like Dylan, she couldn’t hook her hands in his flesh and make him stay. She wanted to believe she had enough pride left to abstain from that degree of desperation.

“Think I heard Buddy moving upstairs,” Ward added. “You still want to get breakfast?”

“Yeah. I know a place that’s open twenty-four-seven.” Besides, this wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with her brother present.

Dylan sighed, a far cry from enthusiastic. “Then let’s go.”

Chapter Sixteen

The roadside bar was mostly empty so early in the morning, so late at night. The regulars, beer-bellied and exhausted after a hard night’s drinking, had all drifted home to their beds. A couple of late night stragglers remained—one dozing over a glass of bourbon under a busted spotlight, another adding and subtracting with a pocket calculator and a paper ledger.

Hazel flexed her sneakered toes as she rested her weight against the bar, waiting for their breakfast to be assembled. The most she could say about the quality was that she’d never been sick the few dozen times she’d come here.

She thanked the barkeep once she’d finished loading a tray with coffee and milk, a measly assortment of toast and little plastic packets of butter. “I can take it from here.”

“You sure?”

Hazel nodded. “Brings back memories.” She shook her head when the barkeep arched her pierced eyebrows. The tray weighed and the coffee threatened to list in its plastic pot. Hazel adjusted, balancing the lot in the palm of one hand as she swung the other out. “Here you go…”
Just like old times.

It was a far cry from freshly grilled sausages or blueberry pancakes at Maud’s, never mind Marco’s generous fare, but it ticked the one box that mattered—they had privacy. And coffee.

Hazel filled all three cups before she sat down into the wooden booth beside Ward and pulled her knees up to her chest. The first sip nearly scalded her tongue. No matter. The coffee was bitter and dark, precisely what she needed to shake off the drowsy afterglow of the Xanax.