Cash had his back to her, but in that split second of stillness, Dad’s face turned murderous, and his eyes locked with Tourmaline’s.
Shit. No. No. No.
Slowly, he stood.
They all looked at her now. Not Cash. The silence stretching. The world changing.
“This shit true?” Tourmaline’s father roared.
Tourmaline lifted her chin and nodded.
Cash didn’t budge. He’d known the whole time, how this was going to go. Probably from the first day they’d met. Suddenly, she wished she had trusted him before he had to ask her to.
Her father’s fist cracked into Cash’s jaw, the sound exploding in the quiet. Cash staggered.
Tourmaline ran.
Cash came right back, shaking it off and meeting her dad with his fists at his side.
Back to finish paying the price.
Someone grabbed her arms and held her. Tourmaline yelled, trying to get her father’s attention, but he didn’t even blink in her direction.
Virginia stood across the way, watching from behind Jason—her hands on his sides. His hand was wrapped back around her thighs, shielding her. They both watched with silent intensity. Tourmaline blinked at them, stunned for a moment, even though she knew they were together and she’d known Virginia would rule. Things were changing.
Her father’s girlfriend pulled her back. “Let them work it out,” she whispered in Tourmaline’s ear, dragging her out of the way.
Tourmaline didn’t fight the woman. The woman . . . What was her name? Dad had never said it—or maybe he had and she’d never bothered to listen for it—and yet, she was still here.
The cicadas still sung. The breeze still blew, hot and damp in the late August evening. Their boots scuffed in the gravel, and her father’s fist landed into Cash’s stomach, pushing his breath out in a tight huff. The women faded behind and the men pressed in tight, gossiping about what was happening like middle-school girls. Their gazes all flickered to Tourmaline, pinned by the woman’s arms around her waist.
No one understood. They didn’t realize anything bigger was going on.
She tried to kick out, but the woman hugged her tight. “It’s okay, honey. He’s just getting him down. It’ll be over soon.”
But Cash wasn’t going down. He was taller than her father. Bigger. Younger. Calvin hit hard, and Cash staggered after each blow, shaking it off and coming back, but he wasn’t even falling to his knees. He pinched off his bleeding nose and slung blood to the ground, spattering the gravel.
Tourmaline’s father landed another solid hit on Cash’s jaw.
This time, Cash stumbled back to his ass in the dirt. Slow. His eyes looked spun and lost to his body.
Tourmaline’s dad was breathing hard. He bent his knees, catching his breath.
“Don’t have a heart attack,” the woman muttered. As if she, too, were waiting for this to end.
Cash hauled himself up.
Her father straightened.
It was taking forever. Why couldn’t they see what was happening? She was caught in a dream, running in slow motion from impending doom. “You are all fucking stupid!” Tourmaline screamed, twisting out of the woman’s grasp.
But they were all interrupted by the sudden rush of leaves and branches that moved to reveal boots and fully armored men appearing from all directions.
POLICE. WARRANT.
There was a split second before they touched him. Before they dragged him away from Cash.
Before Virginia caught Jason around the neck and stayed his motion, whispering in his ear as Queen and the ruler of fate.
A moment before the woman with the silver earrings released her hold on Tourmaline’s arms and lunged after Tourmaline’s dad, brought up short right away by a helmeted and armored man.
A second before Tourmaline scrambled under Cash’s arm and held him up as his president was dragged away, while she stared at the dirt so she wouldn’t have to watch.
And in the split-second silence and utter stillness among the men, the cicadas kept up their song and the breeze washed eternal, lifting Tourmaline’s hair off her neck.
EPILOGUE
They came for Hazard the following week. Virginia visited him in the county lockup and didn’t say a word, just sat there with a smile until the guard told her to leave because Hazard became so enraged it took three officers and a Taser to subdue him.
Tourmaline was surprised again. Whatever Virginia did, she did with an intense commitment. Even when it meant scheduling her workdays around testifying.
In the first six months of her father’s sentence, Alvarez retired. There were whispers it was a forced retirement, but he got a medal anyway. Someone said he was thinking of running for county commissioner.
Virginia took over Tourmaline’s role in the landscaping company.
Jason took over her father’s.
Tourmaline went to UVA and came home every other weekend.
After her father came home, Tourmaline didn’t ask him to visit her mother. She told him he would. They went right before Margaret was sent to Alderson, the minimum-security women’s prison.
Her father didn’t argue, though he did make a rather sullen joke about how serving eighteen months should have been enough, he shouldn’t have to visit, too. But then, Tourmaline was halfway done with college, and her best friend reigned as Queen, and she and Cash had made plans for the summer after she graduated, and so her father’s complaint simply rolled off her like water off a duck’s back.
She’d grown into her life pretty well, after all.
It was only her father’s second time visiting—the last time had been when Tourmaline was still seventeen. He was made to take off his vest (no “gang” colors allowed) and his rings. Give up his wallet. His phone. The cross necklace and the chain bracelet that Tourmaline was pretty sure the woman with the earrings—Victoria—had given him. He was made to pull out his pockets and spread his legs wide, arms on the wall. He did it all like a man who had done it many times before.
They patted him down. They corrected his stance against the wall, even though he was standing just the way Tourmaline was. The CO side-eyed him every time he went past. He held out his hand for the stamp you couldn’t see but could feel, even though you weren’t supposed to be able to.
Tourmaline watched all this, and—while they waited and breathed deep breaths of bleach-scented recycled air—she understood that here he was reduced to the level of everyone else. That he hadn’t yet gotten over being angry and being sad and remembering all the spaces her mother used to inhabit in his life that would never be filled again. Not even when she was released.
A wave of sadness crashed over her, and she reached for his hand.
He took her fingers in a firm grip, as if he needed to hang on to her in order to stay found.
Together, they walked through the gates of hell.
“What do you want?” Tourmaline asked, smiling at her mother when she sat down, rubbing her wrists underneath the table.
“A candy bar. And a Diet Coke,” her mother said shyly, not looking at her father.
“I’ll be back,” Tourmaline said, leaving them at the table alone. She lingered at the vending machines, taking her time to get the items and then slowly made her way back to the table. She put the items down for her mother and then sat beside her father.
“What’s been going on?” Margaret asked, popping the top on the pop.
“Cash says hi, Mom. He had to work today.”
“Nothing much, Maggie.”
Tourmaline’s mother softened all over, visibly, when her father said her name. Softened so abruptly, with this big smile crossing her face and her shoulders relaxing as if someone had just pulled a knife out of her back, that both Tourmaline and her father sat there, staring. “No one’s called me Maggie in so long. I forgot I was her.”
“What do they call you?” her father asked.
“Harris.”
“You aren’t a Harris anymore,”
he said, which felt cruel to Tourmaline.
But Tourmaline’s mother just shrugged, a sly little grin pulling at the corners of her mouth. “I haven’t been to the DMV to change my name, but I’ll make sure it’s my first stop when I get the chance, Calvin.” And it felt very much as if Tourmaline could see the person Mom used to be.
They talked. Her father grew comfortable and smiled. All three of them stood in front of the painted tarp and palm tree, and Tourmaline’s parents both looked at the Polaroid and handed it to her.
The precious time they had slipped through their fingers, each second felt and treasured. They were nothing, but in the presence of this shadow of their history, this love that was at one time true, and maybe had always been only a shadow of something they would never lose, they ceased to remember their nothingness.
Visiting hours ended.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A writer is never a solitary being, even if she does do most of her writing alone in a ripped tank top, mismatched Carhartt socks, and men’s boxers. (cough) I’m so grateful to be surrounded by a host of incredible and smart people.
Endless thanks to my agent Barbara Poelle, who is a ride-or-die, badass MOFO. Thank you for sticking with me, knowing exactly what I needed to write, and giving me the courage to write it. Be my Jack Donaghy forever. And thank you, Brita!!
Anne, thank you for everything—especially for managing to not kill me during edits. Thank you to the entire team at Amulet/Abrams, who have been exceptional at every turn. Alyssa Nassner, for the most gorgeous cover design ever. You made my book! Look like my book! Amanda Lanzone for that amazing illustration (Tourmaline’s nails!). Caitlin Miller, Nicole Russo, Trish McNamara, and everyone else supporting me at Amulet . . . how many ways can I say thank you, because y’all deserve all of them. To their support staff—I may not know your names, but I know you exist and I appreciate all your work.
To Lee, thank you for the computer I needed to finish this book and the straight up truth telling you’ve given me along the way. I owe you so many drinks.
To LC, for Thursdays.
Renee, I thank God you’re my friend, because you’d be a formidable enemy. Without you, there’d be no Virginia. Thank you for all the important things. Thank you for making it cool for me to learn in your wake. Thank you for reading my shit out loud.
To Ricki, for being the Johnny Cash to my Waylon Jennings and for sticking your fingers in the cake with me. (drunkenly tips hat) JJ, for always having the answers, receipts, and a spirit of generosity in sharing all of it. Thank you, Traci, Kerri, Henning, Emily, Nic, & Dhonielle for your texting and emails and reading and commiserating. Thank you, Jeff, for an incredible blurb; and everyone who has/will read and support the shit out of this book.
And listen—thank you, authors who have been incredibly kind to me on this long publishing journey, but it would be weird for me to name because you were just being goddamn decent human beings. Your niceness is so appreciated. I want to be you someday.
Thank you, Laura for being the T to my V. Thanks for letting me steal your Yellow Wallpaper English paper in college. And everything else.
To my family, for your stories past and future. Especially Mom, for teaching me to read, and Dad, for giving me a love for books.
Thank you to the WC Moms.
Dan and Mo Baker, thank you for reading through this and reassuring me I did right.
Holly, thank you for being so supportive and respectful, you are a dream mother-in-law, and I am so grateful for your role in my life.
To M, E & L—I would not be able to do this without you, even as much as you daily prevent me from getting any writing done.
And to J, for bringing me coffee, riding the ever-living fuck out of a Harley, and having a mind that’s like an old curiosity shop where I never know what I’ll find.
Finally, dear reader, it’s you that brings the magic to being an author. It’s because of you that T and V get to come alive. I will never forget that. Thank you.
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