I’m starting to get impatient. From Hazard. I thought I left instructions.
I’m here. In the middle of it. We’ll talk later, she replied. Her heart skipped a beat, but she tightened her eyes and lifted her chin. “So, what is it they actually do together? Just party?”
“No,” Tourmaline retorted, as if she were offended. “They have church every week, and rides and—”
“Church?”
“Not like church church. Their club meeting. They do events. Like most clubs. You know, none of this is anything special. I mean, the one thing they do special is their court runs, I guess.” Tourmaline shrugged as if she’d only just thought of it. “Sometimes caseworkers will call the Wardens for a kid to be escorted to court when their abuser is going on trial and the kid is feeling anxious.”
Virginia blinked. “They go to court with kids?”
“Not like go with them, just escort the car and sit in the parking lot. Occasionally, one or two will sit in the back of the courtroom, but only if the caseworker requests. It can make the right kid feel a lot better to face their evil with twenty tough-looking bikers behind them.”
“Oh.” Virginia frowned and put the cigarette back to her mouth.
It was starting to make sense that Tourmaline insisted they were good. That Tourmaline seemed so naive. It wasn’t innocence so much as a worldview. To her, the Wardens were righteous.
Virginia couldn’t help but be jealous—both of the way Tourmaline saw the world, and also of the idea that for some special children out there, there had been men to stand up when they could not. What would it have felt like for someone like Tourmaline’s dad to be sitting in the back of the room while the judge evaluated whether or not there were any grounds for CPS to keep Virginia away from her dad? It felt as if that could have made all the difference. The judge would have seen the Wardens and not sent her home. She could have, for a moment, shared in the safety Tourmaline had enjoyed her whole life and not ended up here. Virginia’s gaze flickered to a new message from Hazard, cigarette burning away in her fingers.
If the Wardens had sat in the back of the courtroom for her then, would she even be sitting here today?
The question seemed too big and full of tangled decisions to think far on. And there was no answer for this day, except to keep going forward.
She looked up just in time to see Tourmaline’s dad duck through the lilacs. “You goin’ to be staying for dinner, Tourmaline’s friend?”
“It’s Virginia.” She held the cigarette off to the side and turned on a bright smile. He was a worn and wild sort of handsome, with a nice smile and something innately fatherly. Like a rough sort of mother bird. “And hell yes, I’ll take dinner.”
She knew she’d opened strong when he dropped his eyes and chuckled. “All right, girls, why don’t you wash up? We’ll see how this food does. Mexican.” He made a face and headed toward the house. “I don’t know. If it’s bad, you can blame the conscript. I’ll see that he’s adequately punished.” He went inside.
Tourmaline straightened—a crisp, gathered expression on her face. “Forget about Wayne. Forget everything I said. I’m leaving in less than three months. I’ll ride it out.”
Something twisted in Virginia’s stomach. She’d forgotten somehow that they’d graduated. That everyone else was going on to some kind of college, or school, or jobs they intended to grow in.
Except me.
“Mexican.” Virginia brightened and took one last deep breath of the smoke, leaving behind questions about fate to face the earthly things she could manage. “I’m starved.”
Tourmaline left Virginia in the bathroom to wash up for dinner and sent Anna May an emergency The ridiculous is too strong please make an excuse to need me text.
She’d have to cross her fingers and look over her shoulder for the rest of the summer. Maybe spend a lot of nights in or something. It didn’t matter. She just had to make it to August.
When she stepped into the kitchen, the scent of rich meat simmering in its own juice and fresh-cut tomatoes and peppers drowned Tourmaline in a hunger so intense she thought she’d faint before she ever took a bite. But she wasn’t entirely sure it was all the food’s fault, so she avoided looking anywhere near the conscript’s turned back.
Her father sat at the head of the table, legs propped on the edge and hands folded over his lap while he talked with Jason.
Tourmaline pulled her chair out and slumped, checking her phone, but there was no reply from Anna May, which was the way it’d been trending all day. Tourmaline mindlessly scrolled through her phone and tried not to feel annoyed.
“Church after dinner. It won’t be a late night, T,” Dad said to her, patting the table as if her hand were on it. “We’re mulching tomorrow.”
“Oh, joy,” Tourmaline drawled.
“Mulch.” Jason shuddered. “I remember those days.” For a long time he’d worked with Tourmaline’s father, but these days he was gone more and more.
“Always so much whining about mulch,” Dad said.
A sizzling sound came from the kitchen and Tourmaline couldn’t help but glance over.
The conscript stood at the counter, chopping onions, as if there were no one in the room. He gathered the onions into his cupped hand with the flat edge of the knife and dumped them into the pan.
It was weird to have him in the kitchen like this, even though all the conscripts did the menial tasks—cooking, cleaning bikes with a toothbrush, cleaning bathrooms with a toothbrush. (The bathrooms in the house had never been cleaner, and every time there was an event families attended Tourmaline heard all about the clean-bathrooms conscript again. And the conscript who’d done science fair projects. And the Girl Scout cookies . . .) There was a rule about not making a conscript do anything the member wouldn’t do himself. She knew, he knew, they all knew that doing work like this was just what it was to be a conscript. But knowing didn’t make it less weird or the subtext less meaningful.
Cash bit his lip and tossed in more onions, looking relaxed and at ease in a way conscripts usually didn’t.
God almighty, she wanted to close her eyes and die naked in his arms. There it was. Thou shalt not, and she damn well wanted to.
She slid farther down in her chair and looked back at her phone. She couldn’t see a way to make anything happen, let alone a relationship, even if he wasn’t a conscript. Patching in would make his position in the club less tenuous, but the consequences of getting involved with Tourmaline more severe. The betrayal would be bigger. She was certain she could live with how pissed off her dad would be, but she couldn’t expect the conscript to make that choice. That was a boots-on, plunge-into-the-icy-depths, not-going-back thing. She blushed. What was she even thinking? Dreaming. That’s what she was doing.
Virginia met her gaze in Tourmaline’s bathroom mirror and took a deep breath. What now, Virginia Campbell? She’d come this far on her own. She’d held on this long. Now she would make something of the situation. Her way.
Reaching under her shirt, she pulled off her bra and stuffed it into her pocket. It was cheap, and not until she’d had it tucked away did she realize all roads might lead her to the same place. That maybe this was all she truly had to use. Fluffing her hair and fixing the long dark strands carefully around her face, she avoided looking at herself in the mirror.
Now wasn’t the time to hold back. If there was one thing she should be good at by this point, it was working a room full of grown-ass men. Slipping into the hall, she lingered in the shadows and studied the pictures hanging in the hallway.
Here on this family wall, Tourmaline was depicted sitting in a lawn chair in the summer, holding an American flag. She was probably ten. Smiling that sweet margarine smile in a white T-shirt, with her hair in two braids. A younger, more crumpled Jason sat in a chair beside her, half out of the photo, a dazed look on his face despite the tight smile for the camera.
And though he did take a girl’s breath away, she preferred him now. With the
weight of existence age had given him. With more sun and more beard. His presence in the photo was noteworthy—either he’d earned a weird spot in the family, or they didn’t know how to crop him out. It had been Jason speaking just then, back in the kitchen. Jason who’d asked Tourmaline whether she was all right. Jason who kept glancing past Virginia.
To Tourmaline?
Virginia tightened her mouth and moved on.
A woman who looked like Tourmaline laughed over her shoulder. Her blond hair was pulled to one side. The leather jacket across her shoulders was embroidered with crimson roses and green leaves, and strung with black fringe and silver medallions. On her lower back, the words Property of Harris embroidered in white among the leaves. She was the kind of woman who made even Virginia want to linger and stare, and not on account of what she looked like, but because of the look of wild spaces and freedom in her whole being.
This was the woman who was once married to the Wardens’ president, had his baby, and now resided as a number in USP Hazelton, doing time—at least, according to Tourmaline—for a boyfriend’s transgressions.
The woman in the picture was what Virginia always thought she’d become. What she’d grow into. And suddenly, it seemed as if she might not become that woman at all, but skip immediately to the woman residing in federal prison, doing time for a darkness she couldn’t escape. Or she might become the woman her mother had always been. The one always too wrapped up in grief to realize she was wasting it on a terrible man.
A tired longing flared deep in Virginia’s bones.
She didn’t want to do this. Any of it. She wanted to get off this road that seemed to have no end. She wanted to know that in less than three months, she, too, would be leaving this all behind for a better, safer place. And it choked her to stand here, in Tourmaline’s house, and see just how far from that she truly was.
It was quiet. A lull. Time to make an entrance.
Virginia shook her body awake, hardening each limb, look, and thought as she stepped out of the hall. In order to survive, she couldn’t get caught here, longing for someone else’s life.
She scanned quickly, taking in Tourmaline’s dad at the head of the table, Tourmaline at the end, and Jason leaning on his elbow between them. The black guy who’d been with Jason at the bar stood in the kitchen, cooking. The tiredness she’d felt in the hall was pushed deep beneath the exhilaration of doing what she did well.
They all turned to look at her.
They were only three men, in jeans and T-shirts, the air conditioner in the window and the ceiling fan overhead fluttering their sleeves. But despite the clear age differences, together they all seemed alike—brothers bred in the mating of gnarled oaks and springs gurgling under ancient boulders. It seemed as if none of them had been born, but had walked out of the darkness, full grown, on the back of a harsh mountain wind. They were myths, for certain. Centuries dressed in days. They were tall tales that already outrageous men told of things wilder and crazier than they.
They were dangerous, she could sense that. The awareness brushed her skin with cold and tingled the hairs on the back of her neck. At the same time, the nature of the danger evaded her—it was wrapped inside average, warm bodies, contained in the smell of old carpet and dry seventies wood paneling mixed with rich food and burnt tobacco. Earthy and warm and close all around, filling a deep hollow in her belly. Comforting in its baseness.
And really, they weren’t very different from regular men, these Wardens.
Jason stiffened without moving—a satisfying reaction after he had twice looked right past her. The guy cooking looked up. Tourmaline’s father yanked his legs off the table and sat up, tension around his eyes as he avoided looking in her direction.
None of this was new.
Tourmaline sat at the head of the table like a dogwood in the bare branches of wild April. She was relaxed, her hair held back by a headband but loose and wild to her waist. Her blouse half tucked into cutoffs. She sat impervious to the men coming down from the woods. Gone was the quiet, forgettable girl Virginia barely remembered from school. This girl made sense. This girl was in context. This girl was someone Virginia could almost like.
When Virginia walked in, no one would have noticed if Tourmaline had gotten on her knees and crawled to beg at the feet of the conscript. Tourmaline’s stomach pitched steep and fast.
Virginia’s tanned legs stretched for miles out of the untied sneakers, and her slightly oversized T-shirt draped just so as to catch the languid curves of her body. Virginia’s gaze flashed around the room. The intense blue of her eyes, framed with long black lashes and what looked like yesterday’s eyeliner, lit bright with deeply retained mystery. And the wild beauty contained in Virginia’s body—the thing Tourmaline had always recognized in tiny stabs of jealousy—called now to be pursued.
“Where should I sit?” Virginia asked, gaze lighting on Tourmaline hardly long enough to ask the question.
Tourmaline bit her cheek and shoved out the edge of a long bench running down the empty side of the table. “We were just about to get started.”
Virginia sat without looking. “What’re we eating?”
It was an alternative world. A mind-boggling tear in the fabric of the universe. Tourmaline didn’t even try to hide how aghast she was. What. The. Hell? She’d expected Virginia to be as bored as she was satisfied to finally meet these small-town-notorious old men. But Virginia had marched into the room like a woman in a den of lions, unveiling a slithery black whip and swinging it right around to crack through the air—making the rest of the room remember their mouths were full of teeth, their bellies with fire, and they lived to do her will.
It made Tourmaline think of her mother.
It made her stomach tighten.
Panic descended.
The world was all wrong.
There was distance between Tourmaline and the woman with the silver earrings. Distance between family and the girls and women who tried to latch on to the club. But in this moment, the distance was smashed pancake flat. They were the same.
Virginia sauntered to the battered wood table, back straight, careful not to show all that moved under her skin. She wrote the lines she wanted them to read—not simply that she was beautiful, but that she was in control of her beauty. In control of all things. “Where should I sit?” she asked.
Tourmaline shoved out the edge of a long bench running down the empty side of the table. “We were just about to get started.”
Virginia sat. “What’re we eating? It smells amazing.”
“Marinated skirt steak fajitas with fresh guacamole, Spanish rice, cheese, sour cream, and homemade tortillas,” the guy cooking replied.
“T, why haven’t you ever introduced us to your friend? Virginia, wasn’t it?” Jason asked. His gaze wandered lazily from the edge of the table to her eyes, mouth curled into a mischievous smile.
For one split second Virginia careened wildly out of control, heart pumping so hard she thought it might crack open and stop altogether.
His mouth curved deeper. Eyes brighter. And in the sharp black nothing fixed straight on her soul, she felt caught in something unexpected.
“How could I be so thoughtless as to not introduce you to all my high school friends?” Tourmaline snapped, pulling Jason’s gaze.
The interval was long enough for Virginia to resume breathing and gather back the use of her body.
“What happened to your arm?” Virginia motioned to the scars. “I know the ladies treat you like a piece of meat, but did someone try to make sausage out of you?”
He looked away dismissively, as if he hadn’t heard.
Tourmaline’s dad cleared his throat. “Any summer plans, Virginia?”
“Wreaking havoc and causing mayhem throughout southern Virginia,” she said with a smile, not looking in Jason’s direction. He was nothing but temptation and she needed to focus. “How about you?”
“The same.” Tourmaline’s father laughed. “The same.”
> The guy cooking set down a colorful platter of softly charred and tender strips of steak, and peppers and onions. “Let me get the tortillas, one second,” he said. “And a plate for you, Virginia. I didn’t forget.”
“I wasn’t worried,” she sang. If she wasn’t going to use Jason, maybe this one? She glanced over her shoulder, and as he came back, she smiled. “Do you have a seat? I can make some room.” She slid down on the bench.
“The conscript isn’t eating,” Jason cut in dismissively.
“The what?”
“No one,” Tourmaline’s dad said, using the tongs to gather up a thick helping of dripping slices of charred beef.
The man went back to the kitchen without saying a word.
“It’s like pledging. He’s pledging,” Tourmaline said. “So he doesn’t get a seat at the table until he’s earned it.” She flicked her fork at the table. “They’ve all done it. Except my dad.”
“It’s not like pledging. At all,” Jason said to Tourmaline. “This isn’t a fucking fraternity.”
“Well, how else do you want me to describe it?”
Jason shook his head and reached for the platter. “I want you to . . .” He snapped his hand together, Shut up.
Tourmaline raised an eyebrow and took a bite, managing to look completely unimpressed.
“Well, you’re sassy tonight,” Tourmaline’s dad said.
Tourmaline didn’t respond. Her gaze flickered to the kitchen and back to her plate.
Oh. Virginia straightened. It wasn’t Jason who Tourmaline wanted. Jason sat in the picture with her as a little kid. He’d be like a brother. And even if Tourmaline saw what he looked like, she’d seen him as old for too long.
But the guy in the kitchen.
He was both old enough and young enough for Tourmaline. He was a big guy—tall and muscular—with a nice smile and a solid presence, holding his own space, even in a room with two others who each could fill it.
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