Chapter 24

24

The rain slams hard against the windshield of the van, blocking the view with a wall of slick gray. We should've made it back to Carter's thirty minutes ago, but we're traveling at a crawl because of the lack of clarity on the beach highway.

"She loves the car." Sage keeps her eyes on the road as she says it. "It was good of you to do that."

Sky texted us five minutes ago to say she made it back to Nadia's in one piece. I can't help but faintly smile as I think of the way she drove out of the dealership parking lot, her honey brown hair flying straight up through the open top like a troll doll.

"Teal?"

"Yeah?" I won't look at her when she talks. I know I'm being a bitch, but I need time to get over this. And time to figure out a way to make things up to her, too. Growing her dahlias just isn't enough.

"There is something you can buy…if you want to."

I turn my gaze to her fast. "Sure. Whatever you want." I wince. "But, like, within reason. I can't afford to buy you a house right now or anything." I frown thoughtfully. "Maybe a down payment for one, though."

Sage laughs as she pulls into Carter's driveway, where his car is already parked. I think I might see him peeking at us through the window, but maybe it's just some weird shadows this hard rain is causing. "You really think I'd ask you to buy me a house?"

"Maybe a down payment," I say defensively, crossing my arms.

Her smile is warm. "Okay, before I tell you what it is, you have to promise me you'll get it. Okay?"

This time my frown is from confusion. "Um. Why would I need to promise that before I buy the damn thing? What the hell is it?"

She shakes her head. "Promise, Teal."

"What is it, Sage? Do you want money for something bad?" I rack my brain. "Debt? Is Tenn addicted to gambling?"

"No!" Now she's cracking up like this is some kind of joke.

"Did you piss off the mafia?"

She snorts as she giggles. "Yeah, that's it. I pissed off the very prevalent presence of mafia organizations we have here in Cranberry, Virginia."

"Well, we're not that far from Philly, or Jersey, or even the city for that matter!"

Her laughter finally calms down enough for her to speak. "No. Not the mafia."

I wait for her to explain it—or even give a hint—but she doesn't back down. We have a miniature staring contest for almost a whole minute before I sigh. "Fine. I promise I'll get the thing. As long as it's not a hit man, I guess." I pause with a thoughtful frown. "Well, depending on who you want dead, I might consider a hit man."

She grabs her purse from under her seat—an old-looking Kate Spade; mental note: buy Sage a new purse, too—and pulls out a folded flyer. She hands it to me with one raised eyebrow.

I know there is a very good chance this isn't mafia-related, but it kind of feels like we're doing some kind of shady deal. I slowly unfold the paper in silence as she watches, fully expecting one of those folded paper snakes to bounce out or some shit. But the only thing that is revealed are letters, words, and when I read them, I glance up at her with an incredulous look on my face.

"A leather-handbag-making class."

Sage raises her eyebrows. "Yes."

"You want to take a leather-handbag-making class?"

She laughs and shakes her head. "No, Teal. You're taking the class."

I scoff. "No, I'm not. Come on, Sage. What was it that you wanted me to get for you?"

She grabs the paper and shakes it around. "This! This is what I wanted. I want you to take this class. For me."

My eyes are still unnaturally big and I can't seem to relax my face in any capacity. " Why? "

Sage raises an eyebrow and gives a big sigh, like for all the world, she doesn't understand why I'm not understanding. But that's preposterous. I want to make things up to her, and she wants me to accomplish this by my signing up for a useless class?

She counts on her fingers as she responds. "In the last four or five years, you've knitted, crocheted, bound books, and made candles. Am I forgetting anything?"

"Whittling," I mumble, looking out the window.

"Whittling. But none of those stuck. You know why?"

"Because I'm a lazy bitch?" I mean the words to come out like a joke, but instead they are as sour as the strongest synthetically flavored cough syrup.

Sage doesn't miss my tone. "You're not lazy. Or a bitch."

I'm not going to argue with her. I don't want to prove her wrong, even though she's rather enormously and stupidly wrong. Which is the whole reason I'm trying to buy her shit to begin with.

Sage blows air out of her mouth so her cheeks hollow. "Our whole lives, you have loved handbags. Do you remember when we were little, how you carried around those straw Easter baskets? You put Nadia's old credit cards in a sandwich bag, and that was your ‘wallet'?"

I snort mirthlessly. "I was just a dumb kid."

"And now, whenever we go anywhere, you should see the way your eyes light up when you check out what people are carrying."

I shrug. "That's just normal curiosity."

"And when we helped you move. My God. I had no idea you owned that many. But you insisted on bringing every single one to Carter's."

"A woman needs options," I respond as primly as Amá Sonya would, because that's exactly something she would say.

"Teal." Sage looks at me with big, tea-brown eyes. "Your passion is purses."

My cheeks heat. "No, it's not. And that's a stupid passion. It's shallow and dull. And who cares about handbags that much, anyway?"

A memory comes to me in that moment, back when I was still with Johnny. It was before he had hit me for the first time, but after nearly a year of near-constant emotional and verbal abuse. He had seen me touching a male client at work. And by that, he meant he'd "caught" me "cheating." What had actually happened was I said to the guy, "Hey, is it okay if I put your hand on the right spot on the machine?" because verbal dictation wasn't working on him. And once he said sure, then I did it without thinking. Because that was my job . Neither I nor my happily married client gave the action a single blink.

I didn't even know Johnny was there, much less watching. And when he and I went to dinner that night, he acted one hundred percent normal—charming, attentive, and slightly douchey after a couple of drinks. We went to his place after. I'd locked myself in the bathroom to freshen up, because Johnny insisted on daily sex, whether I was into it or not. His nasty temper showed up whenever I denied him anything sexual, which he felt, as a man, he'd had a right to, so best to just get it over with, I'd figured out early on.

And when I got back out, he was holding up a pair of scissors, scissors that were big and orange and ugly and buried in my purse, which was already half shredded.

The Dooney & Bourke small Florentine satchel in the color natural was my first grown-up handbag that I'd saved up for and bought myself. A lot of people don't consider D&B all that fancy or luxe—when Amá had seen my bag for the first time, she scrunched up her nose as though I'd stuffed it with a live turkey—but it was the first purchase I'd made that I was legitimately proud of. Not to mention, the bag was gorgeous —smooth, warm brown leather, with fancy matching tassels and all the compartments a girl could need, in a sophisticated yet casual silhouette.

Johnny knew how much I'd loved it. Silly , he'd called me when he saw me taking selfies with it to send to Leilani. Come to think of it, Johnny called me silly a lot. Once upon a time, I thought it meant he found me enchanting or something. Now I know he meant it like he saw me as a dumb, childish girl.

Anyway, he knew how I felt about that bag, and he decided to punish me for being good at my job by ripping it to pieces.

I lose my temper a lot. I know that's not news or anything. But when I get mad, I tend to yell and scream and generally lose my shit. But I didn't do that with Johnny, not even when he was doing basically the meanest thing anyone had ever done to me. On some level, I must've realized it wasn't safe to be one hundred percent myself around him—especially if that version of myself wasn't smiling, pleasing, giving in to him in any way he demanded, verbally and otherwise.

Instead I cried like a little kid. I wept under his smirking, smiling face, drawing down a torrential, loud rainstorm he didn't even deign to notice. "How could you do that?" I'd asked in a painfully embarrassing, midsob gasp. " Why would you do that?"

He laughed. "You're so superficial, Teal. God. It's just a handbag." He picked up the torn bag and put on a high-pitched, effeminate voice. " Look at me! I'm just a girl who saved too much well-earned money to buy an ugly purse. So I could impress the men I work with like the slut I am. "

When I blink and return to where I actually am—in Carter's driveway, in Sage's ugly old van, the rain whipping even harder all around—I snap. "Look, Sage, I know what you think you're doing here. You think that you can fix me up and make me whole again, by making me like you. You found jewelry and plant hunting and Tenn and now you're engaged and pregnant and getting your new stupid car to go with your shiny new life. But it's not like that with me." I inhale sharply when lightning cracks way too close to the car, lighting us up in equal parts glowing gold and blue. "I can't be happy until I fix my gift, and I can't fix my gift until I find Mama, and you know her gift means we're never going to find her! Which means I am forever unfixable, unlovable, which is why Carter, and you, have always found it so fucking easy to run away from me, am I right?"

I'm too scared to look at her when she breathes, "Teal, no—"

I take a deep breath. Dammit. I'm not supposed to be doing things like blowing up on my sister, one of the few people I'm trying to fix things with! "Look, I know I just said some shit I'm going to regret in about sixty seconds, Sage, and I'm sorry, okay? I just can't stand feeling this way. I can't stand—" I lift a hand, gesturing to the sky. "Let's finish this later," I say. "I need to breathe, you need to get home."

I consider it a victory when I don't slam the door on my way out of the car. Old Teal would've snapped the car damn well in half. That's gotta count for something, right?