Dark and Shallow Lies(57)

Honey used to tell me, Worrying about other people’s business is just one-man gossip.

“You have no idea how messed up she was last winter,” he says. “Evie. She was comin’ apart at the seams. Poor kid. And there’s Bernadette, too damn scared of her own shadow to say a word to her own asshole brother. Probably thought Vic’d start in on her again if she did.” I just stare at him, openmouthed. “Fuck, Greycie. Everybody knows how he’s always treated her.”

I think about Bernadette. Her downcast eyes, and the shawls she wears, even in the summer heat. Hart’s gone dark, and I know he’s thinking about his own mama. How she suffered all those years at the hands of his daddy.

“If Vic had started in on Evie,” he goes on, “maybe Bernadette at least figured she’d get some peace. Or maybe she was just afraid.” He twists his neck, and I hear the bones crack. “Either way, she sure as shit wasn’t ever gonna put a stop to it. And I couldn’t really blame her for that.”

“So you did.”

For the first time in my life it occurs to me that, while I’m up in Little Rock most of the year, their lives all keep going on down here. In ways I’ll never really understand.

Hart shrugs. “I went over there one night back in January. Took the shotgun. Same one my mama used. Pinned Vic up against the wall. Right in his own livin’ room. Told him I had a killer’s blood flowin’ through my veins and that I’d blow his goddamn brains out if he ever so much as laid a finger on Evie again. Or Bernadette, either.” He takes a long drag off that cigarette. “I said they’d be pickin’ bits of his skull out of the wallpaper for the next ten years. Like we did my old man’s.”

“Oh, Hart,” is all I can think to say. No wonder he’s Evie’s hero.

He rakes his fingers through dark, tangled curls and breathes out smoke like a dragon.

“I don’t think he’s touched either one of ’em since.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t shoot you,” I tell him. Vic keeps a bunch of old guns lying around, and he almost always has a pistol on him.

Hart smirks. “He was drunk as a skunk. Never saw me comin’.”

Something horrible occurs to me. “Do you think Victor could have had something to do with whatever happened to Elora? Maybe as a way to get back at you?”

That would make so much sense. What if the secrets Elora is whispering in Evie’s ear are all about Victor? Evie’s own uncle. What if that’s what she can’t stand to hear?

Hart shakes his head. “I thought about that, believe me. And I sure as shit wouldn’t put it past him. But Vic was up at bingo in Kinter that night. Came back on the same boat as Mama and Leo. And that was after midnight.”

He gets up and moves toward the front of the boat to stare out at the gator pond. Hart’s shoulders are slumped. And in the fading light, I barely recognize him.

“It was a good thing,” I tell him, because it seems like he needs to hear it. “What you did for Evie.”

He’s quiet for a minute, then he says, “It wasn’t just the bruises. Vic got busted last fall up in Kinter. Parked at the bayou docks. Had a girl in his car not much older than Evie, even. She was barely seventeen, I think.”

“Jesus.”

Hart sucks in smoke again. “I just wanted the bastard to know I was watchin’ him, you know? That I was watchin’ Evie. And that I’d fuckin’ kill ’im if he ever . . .” His voice trails off.

“You did a good thing,” I say again. “You’re good, Hart.”

He turns back to look at me the way he used to sometimes when we were kids. So tender it could kill me. This is not the Hart that put a big old bullfrog in my bed the summer we were ten. Or the Hart that teased me relentlessly for being afraid of spiders. This is not even the Hart that kissed me once when we were both thirteen.

Or again when we were seventeen.

This Hart is the one that picked me up and carried me back to Honey when I tripped on a tree root out at Li’l Pass and nearly split my head open the summer we were both eleven. The Hart that used his favorite T-shirt to soak up the blood and told me awful knock-knock jokes the whole walk home, just to keep me calm.

“I’m so sorry, Shortcake,” he tells me. “I’m sorry for this whole goddamn summer. You shouldn’t be mixed up in any of this.” He drops his cigarette butt and grinds it out in the bottom of the boat. “Elora didn’t want you anywhere near all this shit. The kind of stuff that goes on down here. That’s why she pushed you away last year.”

“Because Victor was beating the shit out of Evie?” That doesn’t make sense. As awful as it is, that kind of stuff happens everywhere.

Hart shakes his head. “She didn’t even know that then. Besides, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The part that’s visible.” It’s dark now, but there’s enough moonlight for me to see the look in his eyes. And it scares me. “There’s so much more. This whole town is . . .”

Poison.

Hart squats down and reaches for my hand. “You shouldn’t be here, Grey.” He wraps his fingers around mine and squeezes hard. “If anything ever happened to you, Elora would never forgive me.” His voice breaks, and I watch him struggle under the weight of unbearable grief. And guilt. “I’d never forgive myself.”