Page 74 of The Devil She Knows
She sighed. “I don’t really know what you want me to say.”
Daddy chewed on his lip for a moment as if considering, perhaps carefully choosing, his next words. “Your momma said you bought a ring.”
Sam shut her eyes. “Sure did.”
“You do the thing?”
Sam snorted.Do the thing.Jesus. “Uh-huh.”
Dad grunted. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess it didn’t go to plan.”
“The phraseto hell in a handbasketcomes to mind.” Sam laughed at her own joke.
“Well, shit,” Dad said, then sighed. “You, uh, you want to talk about it?”
Well, Daddy, turns out I over-romanticized my relationship, pinning all my white-picket-fence dreams on a woman who never loved me for me. But I didn’t know that, see, so I made a last-ditch deal with a demon to get her back, a demon who happens to be the one making corn bread in the kitchen as we speak. A demon I have feelings for, feelings I’m not sure I’m ready to look at too closely because, you know, demon.
“Thanks, but I think I’m all talked out about it.”
“Roger that. No more talking.” Dad reached for the remote and flipped on the TV, putting it on the Saints game.
Two minutes into the first quarter, he hit the mute button and said, “You know, I never was much for that girl. Hannah.”
Sam heaved a mighty sigh and leaned forward, setting herbeer down on the table atop a coaster with a fancy monogrammedCon it. “Daddy, you never even met Hannah.”
“My point exactly. Hell, I’ve known Daphne less than a day and I already know more about her than I ever knew about Hannah.” He looked at her sideways, a pensive frown pulling down the corners of his mouth and dimpling his chin. “What’s going on with that?”
“With—Dad.Really?” He wanted to talk about her love life?
“I’ve got eyes,” he said, the answer apparently yes. “And I saw you two making ’em when you thought the other wasn’t looking.”
“I wasnotmaking eyes at—”
“That dog won’t hunt, Sammie.”
She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose and stifled a groan. “Complicated doesn’t even begin to describe it, okay? Let’s just … leave it at that.”
“Is it complicated? Or are you complicating it?”
Sam honestly didn’t know how to answer that.
“You two wash up!” Mom called from the kitchen, snapping Sam out of her spiral before she fell into a full-blown existential crisis. “Supper will be ready in ten minutes!”
“Food for thought, Sammie.” Dad patted her on the shoulder on his way out of the room. “Just some food for thought.”
Mom muffled a yawn behind her fingertips. “All right, girls, I’m calling it a night.”
It was almost midnight, and Dad had gone to bed half an hour ago.
“You know where the sheets are if you decide to make up the couch, Sammie, and I put spare toothbrushes in your bathroom.” Mom clucked her tongue. “Still can’t believe that damn airline lost your bags. Makes you not want to fly.”
Not in the door five minutes, and Mom had clocked their lack of luggage. Sam had seen the moment it occurred to Daphne that she hadn’t thought this detail through, this veryhumandetail, so used to, as she had put it, abracadabra-ing when needed. Tripping over an explanation, Sam had pulled a story about the airline losing their luggage out of her ass.
Mom paused at the foot of the stairs. “Daphne? You need a thing, don’t hesitate to holler, you hear? Or ask Sam. She knows where most everything is.”
“Actually,” Daphne said, a gleam in her eyes that Sam had come to understand meant she was up to no good. “During dinner, you mentioned photo albums?”
Sam huffed. She’d hoped Daphne would have forgotten about that, but no. Of course not. “I said it then and I’ll say it again—I do not need nor do I want to relive the horrors of junior high.”
