“But I don’t trust you,” he said. “Not anymore. And I’m not going to sit at school waiting for you to show up with some woman who is going to take me away.”
Hurt and regret made it impossible for me to speak and I wondered if this was how Tyler had felt tonight when I’d sliced him apart. I didn’t think I could hurt him, didn’t think he had feelings I could injure, but it was obvious I had.
I refused to feel guilty about what I’d said. I was just being honest and if Tyler was hurt by that, so be it.
But I had a bad feeling that Tyler was smack-dab in the middle of Miguel’s situation whether I liked it or not.
My pride as I swallowed it was bitter and hard, a rock in my chest. Sour in my heart.
“Do you…do you trust Tyler?” I asked.
Miguel shrugged and then, finally nodded. “I guess.”
“Then whenever this meeting happens, I’ll tell you and you can stay with him,” I said, and waited for Miguel to agree.
Miguel looked down at Louisa and stroked his little sister’s hair, twined the long braid through his fingers.
“Miguel?” Louisa whispered. “What’s happening?”
“Everything’s going to be okay,” he told his sister, and I looked down through a haze at the worn nap of the red carpet, trying to keep my emotions schooled. Professional.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll stay with Tyler.”
I nodded, relief filling me with a cold wind.
But I knew I had to head back out to The Manor and make things right with Tyler. It killed me—destroyed me, actually—that after everything he’d done to me, the pain he’d inflicted, the doubt and confusion, I was going to have to apologize to him.
He’d torn me to the ground, ruined me. The person I’d become after he left was not the person I’d been before, and he’d done that to me.
But I needed him. Watching Miguel help his sister into her coat so I could take them back to their crappy home, I needed Tyler more than ever.
And I hated it.
TYLER
Remy’s was so far off the beaten track you couldn’t even find the road on a map. I took Main out past the three oil drills and then took the first gravel road on my left. I followed that into the bayou, where the cypress and swamp crept closer and closer to the road. The gravel turned to dirt and twice I had to stop because there was a big old croc in the middle of the road. Ten minutes out past the shack where the Louisiana State University bio students came out every spring to count dying plants, there was another dirt road that was actually Remy’s long driveway.
The trees broke into a clearing, a strange little tongue of solid earth in the middle of the swamp, and I parked Suzy beside the twenty or so other cars in the makeshift lot.
Remy’s was alive tonight, every ragged Christmas light and Halloween decoration lit up, and it wasn’t even eight. The smell of catfish and crayfish boil was so thick in the air I could take a bite of it. And the music…the music pumped out the open windows and doors. Piano and guitar, an accordion and trumpet—bright riffs and solos, all of them calling me home.
I pulled on my favorite blue linen shirt, buttoning the one button that was left over my white tank top, wondering if anyone in there would remember me. Remy would, but that might be all. There could be a room full of strangers, not a welcoming face among them.
“Is that Tyler O’Neill?” a woman cried, and I smiled, recognizing the Marlboro-refined voice of Priscilla Ellis. I caught the glimmer and shine of her signature pink sequins out on the deck.
“Is that the most beautiful blonde in the state of Louisiana?” I asked, tucking my fedora on my head, tipping it over one eye.
Priscilla opened the door to the kitchen, a side door that spilled out onto the same wraparound front porch. “Remy!” she yelled. “Tell the band Tyler’s here!”
I took the steps by threes and at the top I found myself in the ancient but unearthly strong grip of Priscilla’s hug. Somewhere between sixty and a hundred, five foot nothing, a hundred pounds and as blonde as a wig could make a woman—that was Priscilla. And she was perfect.
“Where you been, boy?” she asked, her black eyes sharp, her lips as pink as the sequined shirts she favored.
“Around,” I answered, smiling down at her wrinkled face. This, I thought, more than The Manor, more than Bonne Terre, this was home. This woman and Remy and the stage in there, covered in cigarette butts and peanut shells.
“I wondered if you wouldn’t come back around here after your momma’s been poking her nose in places it don’t belong.”