I felt her shake her head. Heard the distant, less critical voice of retrospect. Different from the sharp jabs she usually threw at his name. "Don't know what it was about David, except that he could hold your hand and know exactly what you were feeling."

I'd been listening before, but now I prickled under the brush.

"He was always holding me, back then . . . in the beginning. Before we grew up and things got hard."

"What do you mean? How'd things get hard?"

She was quiet for a moment, as if she was giving me time to change my mind. Giving me one last chance not to know. I sat on the edge of my chair, hungry for her answer.

"Your father was charismatic," she finally said. "He had a way with people. He always nailed the interviews, but could never hold a job. Floated from one to another, but he was always grifting. Finding ways to play off people's emotions. It was like he could see right through them. They trusted him. Some days his ability to read people paid off big. Others, well . . . That's what got him in trouble." She brushed while she talked. I felt her shake her head. "I kept telling him he was in over his head, that it was only a matter of time before he took advantage of the wrong people, but he didn't listen. He was hooked on the rush. Drunk on the money. He couldn't see the lives he was destroying.

"One day, the police came to the door with a warrant. He was using some guy's company as a front to launder money. The guy was loaded. Big house on the golf course in Belle Green. David met him at a poker game one night. Said as soon as they shook hands, he knew they'd get along.

"Before I know it, they're thick as thieves . . . organized gambling rings, extortion, laundering. Until they got caught. That was the last time I saw your father. He left me a note, took the car across the state line into the city, and caught the first plane to who-the-hell-knows. Never came home.

"He loved you, though. Oh God, how he loved you," she breathed. "He'd have grifted the moon for you. He used to set you in his lap and hold your little hands for hours, like touching you could fix anything." Her nostalgia trailed off and the trailer was silent except for the rain. "Couldn't get you to stop crying for weeks after he left."

I wasn't sure what to feel. My father had loved me, every bit as much as in my white-washed memories. And he was like me in ways Mona had never understood. But he was a thief. A con man. And he'd left us in a run-down trailer with nothing, just to save his own skin.

The brush moved easily now, but she didn't stop.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

She snorted. "When I was your age, if my mother had told me I would be anything like her, I never would have believed her. I would have laughed if she'd told me I'd be seventeen and pregnant, and that one day even my own daughter would hate me, and I would grow old alone like she did. I wanted to believe I could be different. That the direction of my life would be different." She sighed. "No kid ever wants to believe they'll be like their parents, Nearly. That's something you have to come to accept on your own."

She was worried I'd fall in love with someone like my father and give up my future like she did. But I was him. In over my head with the wrong people, too stupid to listen, too selfish to turn myself in before it was too late. So what if I went to jail? I should have gone straight to the police. Should have told them everything. If I had, maybe Kylie wouldn't have bled out behind a Dumpster. Maybe Marcia, Posie, and Teddy would still be alive.

Mona stopped brushing and began working my hair into a tight bun, awakening the pain in my head.

"Nothing can change where we come from, Nearly. But you can change where you're headed," she said quietly. "That boy isn't good enough for you. He'll be gone before you know it."

My chair screeched and crashed to the floor behind me. I ripped out the elastic band and threw it at my mother's feet, unable to look her in the eyes. Unwilling to look in my own.

This wasn't Reece's fault.

It was mine.

* * * I leaned against my bedroom door. I had the mother of all psychic hangovers, and the smell of Kylie's blood lingered in my throat.

A red light flashed on my bed.

Reece's cell phone.

I shut my eyes, remembering the look on his face when I'd started to tell him . . . He hadn't believed me.

I grabbed the phone and squelched down on my bed, Gena's dress soaking through my sheets.

TXT ME WHEN U GET HOME-from REECE.

I sent a quick reply.

I'M HOME. I'M SORRY.

I'm sorry I broke my promise. I'm sorry four people are dead. I set the phone down on the bed, stripped off the cold dress, and put on my pajamas. I pulled Reece's pendant over my head and held it. It didn't seem right to wear it anymore. We had a deal and I blew it. And that's all it had been . . . a deal.

I stuffed it into the pocket of my hoodie and hung it across the back of my chair. I reached under my mattress for the bag and dumped the contents on my bed. Pushing aside my father's ring, I picked up the train ticket instead. I'd bought it using every penny I'd saved. Some days, when I thought I couldn't stand it here one more day, I'd hold it and dream about running. Never coming back. But then I'd think of my mother. Her broken smile was a cuff around my heart and I couldn't stomach the thought of leaving.

I stuffed everything back in the bag, then curled up under my comforter and switched off the lamp.

The phone vibrated and I sat up, squinting at the screen. Not Reece. A chill pulled up my spine, drawing the skin tight.

1 New Text from Unknown Number.

MISSED U @ THE PARTY.