Page 107 of Rook

“What the hell are we going to tell Nancy happened to your face?”

To that, he shot me a wicked little smile.

“Out of curiosity, how attached are you to that car of yours?”

Rook - 3 days

“A deer?” Nancy asked, squinting her eyes at my face.

“Yeah, it was awful. It ran out right in front of the car,” Tessa lied effortlessly. “I tried to brake, but there was no avoiding it.”

“Then why are your knuckles all torn up?” Nancy was as observant as ever.

“It was so horrible. It kind of… got trapped, you know,underthe car. And Rook just… he felt so bad for it.”

“It was still alive?”

“I wasn’t going that fast. The speed limits around here are pretty low. And, yeah, it was hurt, but still alive and trying to get itself free. And Rook jumped out and kind of helped pull him free. It worked. He got up and ran away. But Rook’s knuckles got all chewed up from the pavement.”

Nancy’s lips pursed.

She wasn’t quite buying the story. But she had no way of proving anything else but what we said happened.

“Where’s the car?”

“I had to junk it,” Tessa said, sighing. “It was kind of… temperamental already. But after the accident, it was all jerky and weird. The mechanic said it could be fixed. But it was going to pretty much cost more than the car was worth. It just made the most sense to get rid of it.”

“Hmm,” Nancy said, looking between us. “How are you going to visit Lorna then?”

So she had found out.

It was inevitable.

Tessa’s chin lifted ever so slightly. “I’m sure there are busses that go out that way. I’m sorry, but is that a problem?” she asked. I had to admit, the slight hint of attitude in her voice was kind of hot. “It was my understanding that only Rook couldn’t visit Lorna.”

Nancy bit the inside of her cheek, knowing Tessa was right, but wanting to be able to do something to stop her from going.

“Lorna is the reason Rook ruthlessly beat a man within an inch of his life.”

“A conman,” Tessa reminded her. “And I think we can both agree that men who lie to and screw over women for weeks, months, years, or evendecades,” she went on, digging in, and I had to say, the way Nancy paled was fucking priceless, “shouldn’t be able to just… get to go on and live their lives happily, leaving damaged women in their wake.”

“Violence is never the answer.” The conviction had gone out of Nancy’s voice, though.

“There’s something poetic about vengeance. Like, when a man leaves his devoted wife for his assistant. Only to be secretly screwing around with said assistant… don’t you think it would be… justified for that assistant to know what it feels like to have her life implode after what she did to the wife for years?”

I could see the wheels turning behind Nancy’s eyes.

“I mean, just hypothetically, of course,” Tessa said, shrugging. “Oh, I do have a receipt from the place that crushed my car, though,” Tessa effortlessly changed topics. “Let me scrounge that up for you…”

“That won’t be necessary,” Nancy said, seeming distracted. “I, uh, I have to get going,” she said.

Then, I shit you not, she left.

Without doing a search.

“You were right,” I said, shaking my head as I looked at the closed door.

“I think she just needed to be reminded that she has a lot in common with Lorna. The only difference being Lorna had someone to stand up for her, when Nancy didn’t.

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