Page 8 of Worse Than Wicked
“Yes,” I say, picking up my glass and taking a gulp of water to wash down the sawdust in my throat. “But then, you already know that, don’t you?”
He exchanges another look with Duke.
I only ever mentioned her to him once, in passing, when I was talking about the founding families in our town. I didn’t tell him we were friends. He had no reason to think she was any different than DeShaun Rose or Cotton Montgomery or any other founding heir. She didn’t want to be shared, so I never told him or Duke or anyone outside my family. My family that worried and threatened and hid her away until I knew not to speak her name ever again. But I spoke it inside my mind, whispered it like a prayer in my darkest moments.
“If you’re talking about Dahlia Delacroix, I don’t know much about her at all,” Baron says.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Wasn’t that part of your plot to make me crazy?”
He frowns. “No.”
“It didn’t work, anyway,” I say. “I’m not crazy, and I’ll never let you make me think I am again.”
“We’re not trying to.”
I don’t believe him, but when he asks about her again, I know he won’t let it go.
So I shrug like it means nothing, like it’s not a betrayal.
“We were friends when I was a kid,” I say. “I thought she was real, but I guess I made it up. I don’t really know. It was a long time ago, and I don’t have a memory like yours. I remember us being friends, but we weren’t.”
“Why do you think that?” Baron asks, cocking his head.
“I used to write letters to her, at the boarding school where she went,” I say. “But my parents didn’t like it. They’d always act concerned, I think because she didn’t exist, or our friendship didn’t. They’d never talk about her, and when I did, they acted all weird. They told me it was best to leave her behind. They sent me to therapy when I kept bringing her up. And when I was older, I sent her a letter, and the boarding school wrote back saying she didn’t exist. Unless you wrote that letter.”
My heart hammers as I wait for a response.
Duke shakes his head. “We didn’t write any letter. We don’t even know about this chick. Right?”
He looks at his brother. Baron nods in agreement.
They may not know much about her, but she knew, far before I’d so much as guessed, that Baron would destroy me. She remained hidden in the dark forest of my subconscious like intuition, whispering from the shadows for me to be careful, that we can’t trust anyone. She wrapped her chubby child-fist around my spine and tugged, filling me with unease, planting the tiniest seed of caution, like the poison mushroom she slipped between the priest’s lips, silencing him forever.
“Okay, so she left that school, or the Delacroixs didn’t tell you where they really sent her,” Baron says. “That doesn’t mean you imagined her. She’s in their family tree.”
“Is she?” I ask, my throat suddenly tight. “Did you check, or did you just believe me when I told you she was one of their kids?”
“Of course I checked,” he says, his dark eyes earnest behind his glasses. “Mabel, you didn’t make up a person. I did extensive research on every founding family in Faulkner. She’s one of our lawyer’s kids. She’s not imaginary.”
She’s real.
My heart pounds erratically. They made me think I was crazy, but it was the other things, the things they didn’t do, thatsolidified it. If it hadn’t been for that letter, for the way my family acted when I told them I wanted to contact her again, I might have held onto the thread of my sanity. I would have known the Dolces were trying to destroy me. When all of their torture caught up with me, I would have had a lifeline to reality. When I lost Dahlia, that’s when I realized it wasn’t just these boys trying to drive me mad. It was my own mind slipping away, already lost.
I spent three years thinking it was all in my head, that she was.
Is this real? Or one more ploy, one more building block in their next, elaborate scheme?
“Were we really friends?” I whisper. “Or did I make that up?”
“I’m not sure about that,” Baron says. “Obviously, it’s harder to find anything on little kids. No social media, not many school or hospital records. The regular extracurriculars for that age, music and dance and gymnastics and swim. A couple of those pageants that southerners still do.”
“Oh yeah,” I say, smiling at the memory. “Another Delacroix tradition that ended with her.”
Baron takes in this information without the judgment most show for the child pageant scene, his eyes serene behind his glasses. “She moved away, so I didn’t think she was important. But I’m sure we can find out.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not a good idea.”
“Why?” Duke asks.
