Tell Me (9 page)

“Oh, come on, Mom.”

“Trust me on this one. It’s just that Alex has the balls to do something about it.”

“You think he’s involved with Amity’s mom?”

“I’m just saying no good will come of his taking her case. Mark my words!” The light changed and the conversation ended, but Nikki had never forgotten her mother’s comments that day.

Now, as she drove home twenty years later, Nikki sneaked a glance at her aunt, sitting ramrod straight, and noted the firm, unhappy set of her jaw, the fist balled in her lap. She couldn’t help but wonder just how much truth there had been in her mother’s bitter prediction. Certainly a lot of pain had ensued.

And, she knew, it wasn’t over yet.

The city was rising before them, rolling acres of lowland giving way to a sprawling suburbia, houses with yards lining the streets. Around the periphery of the town she drove until she returned to the old manor on Canterbury Lane where Alexander had brought his wife thirty-odd years earlier. The lots here were large, the grounds well tended, shade trees and hedgerows protecting each owner’s privacy.

Nikki remembered the times she’d spent here, sharing secrets with Hollis in her oh-so-pink bedroom, keeping mum about Elton’s fascination with a variety of drugs, most notably weed and ecstasy, and driving out to the farm outside Savannah where Aunty-Pen had kept her horses; after college, she’d continued to ride and insisted Hollis do the same.

“I’m not really into it,” Hollis, who was fair and looked very much like her mother, had admitted to Nikki.

It had been a warm summer day, and Nikki remembered it clearly because her cousin had said, “Why don’t you drive?” even though Nikki wasn’t old enough and didn’t have her license.

“For real?”

“Sure. You drive all the time with your folks, don’t you?”

“But I only have a permit.”

Hollis’s blue eyes had twinkled with a naughty devilment as she’d scooped her keys from her purse and whispered, “I won’t tell, if you don’t.”

“But Dad would kill me if—”

“If he found out? Well, he won’t,” Hollis said. “We all have our secrets, don’t we? Including my mother.” With a smirk she added, “I just found out I might have a half sibling somewhere. How about that? Can you believe that Mother actually
did it
with some boy while in high school and got herself knocked up?” Hollis had giggled at the thought. “It’s so rich!”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Oh, yeah. I overheard my aunt on the phone the other day.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“I don’t know if she even had it. Just that she was preggers. And I always thought that if I had a half sibling somewhere it would be from my dad.”

“What are you talking about?” Nikki had felt embarrassed and uncomfortable.

“He was hot when he was younger. Still is, I guess, but it’s weird to say about your dad.”

“Sick.”

“Enough about my twisted family, with all our skeletons neatly tucked away in their closets,” she said with a shrug. Then, eyes gleaming, she asked, “Aren’t you friends with Amity O’Henry? You know her, right, she’s in my class?” Hollis’s lips had stretched into a smile that hovered between pleased and something else, something almost wicked.

“Yeah. I like her.”

“She’s trouble, Nikki.”

“How would you know?” Hollis ran with the popular crowd, the cheerleaders and dance-team members and prom princesses. Amity didn’t. Nor did Nikki, at least not at that time.

“I hear things.” Hollis’s already arched eyebrow had raised in that “I’ve got a secret” manner that had always gotten under Nikki’s skin.

“What things?”

“Elton and his friends have all . . . you know.”

“No, I don’t.” She didn’t like the tone in Hollis’s voice. So much like Aunty-Pen’s.

“Well, if they need a blow job, they can just call Amity and she’ll oblige.”

“What!” Nikki couldn’t believe it. “That’s dumb! Stupid older boys bragging about something they only wish they could do! Sick, Hollis!”

“Oh, Nikki, grow up, would you?” Hollis had rolled her eyes. “It’s not that big of a deal except that Amity isn’t very selective, if you know what I mean. She’s just like her mother.”

“That’s crap.” Nikki had heard the rumors about Blondell, of course, but had chosen to ignore them.

“Do you want to drive or not?” Hollis asked, annoyed.

“Yes.” Nikki snagged the keys before her cousin could change her mind. Within minutes she was behind the wheel of Hollis’s cool Camaro, driving to the stables where Aunty-Pen kept her horses, on property owned by Nikki’s father, thousands of acres of lush Georgia farmland surrounding a large lake. There was the old family farmhouse that had stood for centuries, built long before the Civil War, and far away on the other side of the lake, a small cabin still stood, a cabin where an unthinkable act would occur and Amity O’Henry would lose her life, though no one knew it then.

That day with Hollis was warm for autumn, sunlight dappling the ground where it pierced the canopy of live oak branches that shaded the road.

Hollis’s head was bent forward; she was busily French braiding her streaked hair. “Me riding horses makes
her
happy, and so I do it so she’s not always on my case. I have to placate her so she doesn’t
always
stick her nose into my business. The way she acts, you’d think I was five instead of sixteen.”

“I love riding,” Nikki had enthused, and she’d meant it. She’d been one of those “horsey girls” in grade school and still loved hanging out in the stables with the animals. Of course, lately her interest in boys had cut into the hours she’d spent riding, but she still adored the animals and rode whenever she got the chance. She’d never really understood her cousin’s apathy toward the beautiful mares and geldings that Aunty-Pen loved so much. But then there were lots of things about Hollis she didn’t get. Like allowing her to drive the car. No way would Nikki ever be so generous if, and when, she got her own set of wheels.

“I know. You’ve always been into anything to do with horses. Not me.” Shrugging, Hollis had added, “I’ve got better things to do.” She’d glanced through the bug-spattered windshield. “Hey! Watch out! The turnoff ’s just around the next bend in the road.” Her words had been a little muted as she was holding a rubber band between her teeth.

“What better things?” Braking as she rounded the long curve in the road, Nikki gave wide berth to a couple of boys riding bikes while balancing fishing poles. In baseball caps, they were laughing and talking, seemingly unaware they were sharing the road with anyone as they pedaled along the asphalt, smack dab in the middle of Nikki’s lane.

“Idiots!” Nikki had muttered under her breath and saw in the rearview mirror the kid with the backward turned baseball cap flip her off. Great.

“What would I do besides riding?” Hollis mused, double-checking that her blond braid was perfect in the mirror on the visor. “
Anything
. Waterskiing, or tennis, or hiking, or dancing, or getting a pedicure, for God’s sake.” She’d laughed, that soft trill that still lingered in Nikki’s mind. Hollis then glanced in the passenger’s mirror to survey her work and, apparently satisfied, snapped the band into place. “Any-damned-thing.”

That had been the end of their conversation as Nikki had seen the gravel lane leading to the farm where Aunty-Pen’s horses were stabled. She turned onto twin ruts where dry grass and weeds scraped the undercarriage of Hollis’s car.

“You know what?” Hollis said then, a funny little grin stretching her lips. “Why don’t you ask your friend Amity to come out and ride sometime?”

“I thought you said she was trouble.”

“I know, but maybe I like trouble.” Hollis had leaned back in her seat to stare out the window at the lush grass of the fields that butted up to the lake. Almost under her breath she’d added, “Being with Amity could be a lot of fun.”

Now, reliving her conversation with Hollis, Nikki saw it in a whole new light, without the naïveté of her youth. Still, she experienced a deep and oh-so-familiar pang of emptiness when she thought of the older cousin she’d adored and the friend she’d lost not long afterward.

They had gone riding with Amity, but only once, because less than three months after that warm autumn day, Hollis and Elton were in the horrid crash that took both their lives. A sudden winter storm had swept through the South, snow falling, ice sheeting the roads, temperatures low enough to endanger the peach trees.

As Nikki understood it, her uncle was supposed to pick up Hollis from a friend’s home, but he’d been busy and had tossed the keys to his son with a warning of “Be careful” and, when his wife had worried about the weather, had cast off her concerns. “He could use some experience in the snow. For the love of God, Pen, you can’t mother-hen them forever.”

Aunty-Pen had never let him forget those chilling words because of the tragedy that had ensued. Elton had gone straight to Hollis’s friend’s home, making it to her house without much trouble. But the storm took a turn for the worse in the two hours he spent there, and on the return trip they hit a patch of ice that sent the car skidding out of control and into a telephone pole. Hollis, who was not wearing her seat belt, had been flung through the windshield, her neck had been broken, and she had been pronounced DOA at the hospital. Trapped in the car until the EMTs and the jaws of life could free him, Elton had sustained life-threatening injuries. In the Atlanta hospital, he’d lingered a few days, unresponsive, his injuries so acute that he couldn’t survive without life support. Though Aunty-Pen had pleaded with the doctors and her husband to keep him alive, in the end, after a harrowing week during which she was told that Elton was “brain-dead,” the hard decision had been made.

Her aunt and uncle had buried both their children two days before Christmas. Aunty-Pen, though she professed to love him with all her heart and had stayed with him all these years, couldn’t truly forgive her grieving, guilt-riddled husband.

Nikki remembered standing at the grave sites, fresh earth turned, coffins gleaming as winter sunlight played wickedly upon the thawing ice and snow. From somewhere in the distance, the sound of a Christmas carol had whispered hollowly through the pines surrounding the cemetery.

Too late, Nikki had thought at the time. Far too late.