Last Breath (The Good Daughter 0.5)(29)

Flora started to nod. “It sounds like your way gives me a chance, at least.”

“I can’t make any promises,” Charlie hedged, because sometimes Ken Coin was smarter than she wanted to admit. “Now, listen, your Meemaw said that Oliver has a record. I know you said before that he wasn’t mixed up in anything. I really need the truth from you now. I’m not going to judge you, or lecture you, or pass judgment. I just don’t want to be surprised by Mr. Coin when he comes in.”

Flora pressed together her lips. “I’m supposed to open the diner tomorrow morning. Nancy can’t do it ’cause she’s got summer school.” Flora stopped to swallow. “You said I have to have a job to prove to the judge that I can take care of myself. I can’t get fired.”

Charlie let out a short breath. The girl was still worried about emancipation when she should have been worried about prison. “Is there anything you’re not telling me?”

Flora said, “I’m sorry, Miss Quinn, but I can’t tattle on anybody. That’s not right.”

Charlie studied the girl’s open expression. Thirty minutes ago, Charlie had been worried about the Pikeville foster system. Now Flora was looking at a night, possibly more, in the women’s detention center. She wouldn’t make it a day without being irreparably damaged. The older inmates would set upon her like jackals.

Charlie asked, “Who are you protecting?”

Flora said nothing.

She guessed, “It’s not Oliver, is it? You’re protecting someone else.”

Flora looked away.

“Is it Meemaw?” The Porsche. The beer money. Maude was the clearest beneficiary of Flora’s trust. She was also keeping the girl in line with her fists. “Flora, listen to me. Someone is going to sleep in jail tonight. Do you want it to be you, or do you want to tell Mr. Coin what Meemaw has been doing and maybe work it out so that it’s just you and your grandpa living in the apartment?”



Flora kept looking down at the table. “I don’t want to get anybody—”

“In trouble, I know. But if you’re taking the fall for Meemaw, think about where this ends.”

“I’m a kid.” She shrugged. “I won’t get in trouble like she would.”

“In trouble for what?” Charlie asked. “Hypothetically?”

Flora glanced over her left shoulder, then her right. She saw the two-way mirror. She looked into Charlie’s eyes, and she silently mouthed the word meth.

Charlie suppressed a curse. She knew from Ben that the cops were looking for a van that was being used to cook meth in the vicinity of the cinder-block apartments. Maude didn’t strike Charlie as a meth freak, but Leroy had all the signs. Were they sending their granddaughter to make the buys, then Leroy took some off the top and Maude sold the rest at Shady Ray’s for beer money? And was Maude beating Flora whenever Flora refused to make the buys, because the girl struck Charlie as the type of kid who didn’t relish the idea of breaking the law.

Charlie told her, “If you go down for a crime your grandmother committed, I want you to know that you’re probably looking at hard time. I don’t mean jail. I mean big-girl prison.”

Flora’s throat worked as she swallowed. “I’m only a kid, though.”

“There are a lot of teenagers in adult prison who thought they’d get a light sentence because of their age, and they’re going to have gray in their hair by the time they get out.”

Flora seemed to waver.

“I want you to think about something,” Charlie said. “The way the police arrested you, the SWAT team and all the cops, I’m assuming that was to scare you. And you should be scared, but you don’t have to be stupid. They’re obviously trying to intimidate you into turning on whoever sold you the drugs in exchange for your freedom. It’s why they handcuffed you behind your back instead of in front. It’s why they took you down in front of your friends, behind the place where you work.”



Flora chewed her lip.

“You can give them the name of the van driver and make all of this go away.”

“Miss Quinn, those are bad people. They’ll kill me.”

Charlie had suspected she’d say as much. “Then you can give them the name of the person who sent you out to buy the drugs in the first place. The person who skimmed some off the top and sold it on.”

Flora looked shocked. “I can’t do that. Turn on my own blood. She took me in when my mama died. She’s all I got, except for Leroy.”

Charlie tucked the girl’s hair back behind her ear. It broke her heart that she was protecting her own abuser. “Flora, I know that you love your Meemaw, and I know that you want to do the right thing, but you have to ask yourself if your loyalty is worth the next five or ten years of your life.” She added, “And for that matter, what does it say if your Meemaw lets you go to prison so that she doesn’t have to?”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Flora defended. “She loves me too much.”

“She’s beating you.”

“She gets mad sometimes, is all.” Flora added, “I hit her back sometimes, too.”

“Is she afraid of you when you hit back? Afraid like you’re afraid of her?”