The Familiar Dark(55)
“Nope,” Jimmy Ray said. He sounded amused.
“Where’s my bra?” I asked, turning to face him with one arm over my breasts.
“Around here somewhere.” He grinned at me. “You’re crazy if you think I’m helping you find it. I’m enjoying the show too much.”
“You’re disgusting,” I told him. Threw aside blankets and kicked through piles on the floor until I found it, then my shirt wadded into a ball next to his dresser. “Can you give me a ride back to my car?”
“No need. It’s right out front. I had Sam drive it over last night.”
Vintage Jimmy Ray. On the surface it seemed like a thoughtful gesture, but really it was insurance against me outstaying my welcome. I leaned over to pick up my shoes, still moving slowly to keep my stomach from sliding into my mouth, and Jimmy Ray reached out, locked his hand around my wrist. I jerked upright, shoes forgotten, tried to pull away.
“Sit,” he said, giving my arm a tug. I pulled backward, but he tightened his grip. “Sit,” he repeated, less give in his voice this time, patting the bed next to his hip with his free hand. “For a second.”
I sat gingerly, the edge of my butt touching the bed, my whole body wound tight and poised for flight. I didn’t think he was in a hitting mood, but with Jimmy Ray you could never tell for sure. He sighed, like I was being ridiculous, but he let go of my wrist, made himself comfortable again on his stack of pillows. “Remember Libby Lang?” he asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “Of course I do.” When I was growing up, people told the story of Libby Lang with a kind of predatory glee, the same way I suspected city kids told stories of girls snatched off the street by strangers or houses haunted by killer ghosts. A mythical legend meant to warn, but also to titillate. It didn’t matter if the story was true; what mattered was the lesson. Don’t be like Libby. Don’t let it happen to you. All of it always blowing back on Libby, everyone else involved somehow wiped crystal clean of any blame. The story was always a little different depending on who told it, but in the version I heard most often Libby was raised by her mama in a trailer not far from where I grew up. She was one of eight or ten kids—the number changed with the teller. All of them with different daddies—that part of the story never varied. But when Libby was about twelve or thirteen, she got a wild hair up her ass to find her real daddy. Maybe she was tired of whoever her mama had playing the role at the time, some loser with meaty fists or wandering hands. Or maybe she was one of those fanciful girls, the kind who entertain stories about how somewhere out there is a real family who will save them, cuddle them, and treat them like the princesses they were meant to be. A fool, in other words. The only link Libby had to her father was her paternal grandma, a woman she saw maybe once or twice a year. When Libby asked about her father, her grandma warned her off. Told her that he didn’t have no interest in knowing Libby, that he wasn’t a good man. Which, given the rumors about Libby’s granny, seems like advice Libby might’ve wanted to heed. If that woman—who bred fighting dogs and threw her own children out like leftover trash—thought someone was bad news, then he surely was. But Libby was stubborn, and she kept asking around. Sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong. This is the point in the story when everyone’s voice dropped, the words coming out more like a hiss. Eventually, she found out where her daddy was holed up deep in the holler (making moonshine or meth—again it depended on who told the story) and Libby took off to find him. Everyone knew it wouldn’t come to anything good, and they were proved right when she showed back up a month or so later, beaten half to death, missing a finger, and pregnant. The thing was, no one around here had any sympathy for Libby, who should have known better. There are consequences to digging too much, to trying to find people who don’t want to be found, to not taking no for an answer. To pushing past your limits. Libby was the poster child for I told you so. The wretched face next to the definition of she had it coming.
“That story’s probably not even true,” I said. “Just some made up bullshit to keep us all in line.”
“It’s true,” Jimmy Ray said. “I knew her. She was my age.” His voice was serious along with his face, lines etched around his mouth. “She had the baby and then she killed it. Killed herself, too. Drank a bottle of bleach. She thought she knew what she could handle, how much she could take. But she was wrong.”
Goose bumps prickled the back of my neck, and I crossed my arms, cupped my elbows against a sudden chill. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m nothing like Libby Lang. She was a kid. I’m a grown woman.”
“Pain don’t discriminate, Eve. It doesn’t know if you’re grown. Doesn’t care, either. It hits as hard either way. Libby wanted to know who her daddy was, but she would have been better off leaving well enough alone.” Jimmy Ray leaned forward, green eyes glittering in the dark purple shadows around his still healing nose. “Sometimes the answers are worse than the questions. Sometimes it’s better not to know.”
“I have to,” I whispered. I didn’t know how to explain it to him, this man who’d never loved anyone, not really. How Junie might not be in the world anymore, but that didn’t make her any less present. She was entwined with every part of me. Every muscle, every drop of blood in my body, every breath I took, every thought and wish and memory. I couldn’t put all that away, keep going and forget about what had been done to her. Couldn’t be such a coward that I shied away from the truth, even if it was the killing kind.