CHAPTER 78

PERLA

He wasn't going to do it. He wouldn't. When I had stared up into my father's eyes the night of my birthday party, I had seen a strength there. He hadn't wanted to kill me, but he had been man enough to do what he thought needed to be done. And I had seen the love in his eyes when he placed the blade against my throat.

Grant didn't have that specific bone in his body. He had other good traits—ones I had appreciated while we made our life together—but he was not built like me or my father.

Grant put his mouth against my ear. "Did you kill your mother too?"

Kill her? No. She killed herself. She ignored me, wormed herself between me and my father at every opportunity, and spent all our money on drugs. She was high the morning I brought her a cup of coffee. So high that she didn't notice the taste or the powdery flecks I hadn't fully crushed. She was so high, she could barely see that it was me.

I wet my lips. "No," I whispered. "She overdosed. You know that. Grant, you know me . Let go of my hand. You're hurting my wrist." If I turned quickly, I could stab him in the stomach or chest. Then kill the girls, then call the cops. Tell them that I'd caught him in the aftermath. He'd attacked me, I'd gotten the knife free and defended myself.

"Tell me why you killed Lucy."

Because he wanted her. Her and Kitty and everyone except for me. He had special time with them, special relationships with them—and I got the leftovers. The dirty laundry, the dinner and dishes, the half hour of television before he fell asleep in the recliner.

My birthday was supposed to be all about me, but when I'd opened my presents, there were two that weren't for me—one for each of them . I could tell they were from my dad because he sucked at wrapping and always wrote my name directly on the paper in black Sharpie.

It was my birthday, and he had gotten presents for them.

"Perla." Grant's voice was harder, his grip on me tightening, and he shook me as if it would cause the truth to shake free.

It wouldn't. No one knew what had really happened that night, or what had caused it, or the dozens of little moments that had led up to it.

Long live Piketo.

I tried to pull my hand free, but he fought me, and the blade tip scraped against my neck, a hot rip of pain. I gasped. Maybe I had gone overboard in sharpening it.

"I'm sorry," he said in my ear.

Then he did the one thing I didn't expect.

The one thing I would have bet my life on him not being capable of.

The one thing I did bet my life on, only this time I would lose it.

He pressed my hand hard, pinning the blade so deep against my flesh that it cut into the tendons, popping them like rubber bands. And there was a moment—before the pain hit, before I understood what was happening—when everything stopped.

A moment of clarity. A moment that I wondered if my mother, or Lucy, or Kitty had experienced, a moment of pure pause, where the enormity of the moment hung above me and I had a chance to think.

And I thought about my dad. There were these Oatmeal Creme Pies we used to buy at the gas station down the street from our trailer. And on Friday nights, we would watch a Clint Eastwood movie, and he would drink beer and I would have a sip, and we would each have a creme pie and he would pass me his and let me lick all the icing out of it and give him back the cookie part, and those Friday nights ... those were the happiest moments of my life. Just me and him and Clint.

Grant yanked my hand to the right, ripping the blade through the thick muscles that protected my carotid artery—and it was different from before. I tried to catalog the distinction, but somehow I was on the blanket, and then I—