Page 2 of Half the Summer's Night
Then someone calls out Abilene’s name. Mr. Snow, the mortician. Abilene’s uncle, who’s been taking care of her ever since she moved to Rosado last year. That’s one of the things we have in common, that we’re both being raised by our uncles.
The other thing is that we’ve both killed someone.
Abilene’s smile turns apologetic, and she gives us—me?—a shy little wave before ducking over to her own uncle, who’s almost as tall as I am but much more gangly. He also seems kind. Kinder than Uncle Nash, anyway.
“Don’t bother people,” Uncle Nash says harshly, his hand still squeezing my shoulder as he pulls me away from the casket. He’sangry. I can feel his anger radiating off him like heat, and I know I fucked up.
Because he didn’t know I knew about Abilene Snow, the girl who killed a football player in Magnolia, two towns over. The one girl in this world who might not think I’m a monster. Now he does.
And he’s not going to let me near her ever again.
When we get back homeafter the funeral, Uncle Nash throws his arm over my shoulder, stopping me from going upstairs to my bedroom. I’m still thinking about Abilene Snow, like I’ve been doing for the last hour, sneaking tiny little glances at her during the burial service. She hung back during most of it, waiting beneath a sprawling pecan tree beside her uncle, watching everything with a clear, pleasant expression.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Uncle Nash says cheerfully, although he presses hard on the side of my neck, reminding me who’s really in charge.
“Upstairs,” I mutter.
“Nah.” He pulls me sideways, out of the foyer and into the living room. I stumble along with him, not fighting back. Fighting back gets me punished. “Nah, you’re going to have a celebratory drink with me.”
He pushes me down on the sofa and ambles over to the wet bar set into the wall, glass clinking as he takes down a decanter of whiskey. “That motherfucker’s finally dead,” he says as he pours the drinks. I watch him and don’t say anything. I know from experience that when he gets like this, it’s better to just go along with him. Take the drink. Smile at his stupid jokes.He’ll get bored of me eventually, and I can go hide away in my bedroom until he needs me again.
Uncle Nash turns around, holding a glass of whiskey in each hand. I hate whiskey. Hate alcohol in general, really. “Can you mix it with a Coke?” I ask.
“Can you mix it with a Coke?”Uncle Nash repeats in a nasally, mocking voice. “What are you, a girl? No, you’ll drink it straight.”
He shoves the glass at me, and I stare down at it as he settles into his big leather armchair and kicks out the footrest. He swirls the whiskey around, gazing happily over at the never-used fireplace. “You did good with that one,” he says. “Didn’t hear a single whisper of foul play at the funeral.”
I tilt the glass up so the whiskey presses to my lips, but I don’t take a drink. Uncle Nash knocks his back, of course, smacking his lips afterward. Something about the sound makes my skin crawl with a hot, prickling anger.
That’s been happening more and more lately with Uncle Nash.
“So why’d you want to go upstairs?” He looks over at me and grins. “Instead of celebrate a job well done?”
“I already celebrated that,” I mutter, which is true. Whenever I kill someone particularly important for Uncle Nash, he’ll arrange for a woman to spend the night with me afterward. The one he got as a thank you for Mr. Spencer had obviously been someone expensive. She was as beautiful as a movie star and smiled at me like she meant it.
But I still thought about Abilene Snow as I thrust inside her, the way I always do.
Uncle Nash chuckles. “You mean with Evelyn?” He grins. “Yeah, that one cost me a pretty penny. Was she worth it?”
I shift on the couch, the leather creaking. I don’t want to talk about this. “She was nice.”
I immediately know it was the wrong thing to say, because Uncle Nash howls with laughter, throwing his head back and kicking his legs against the footrest. “Nice?”He squawks. “You fucked a thousand-dollar whore and all you can say is that she wasnice?”
I squeeze my whiskey glass and look down at my lap. “Can I go upstairs now?” I say darkly.
“Why? So you can jack off?”
I jerk my head up. Uncle Nash grins cruelly at me. His glass is already empty.
“No.” I say it too quickly. Too defensively.
“I don’t understand you, Rowan.” He shakes his head and jumps out of the chair and walks back over to the wet bar. I watch him the whole time, stalking him like he’s one of the many targets he’s given me since my first kill when I was thirteen years old. “You know how many boys your age would kill to fuck someone like Evelyn Landry?”
I remember how Evelyn slid the straps of her dress off her shoulders in front of the open window facing the ocean. We’d been at the hotel, not here, the way it always is when Uncle Nash gets me a woman. But all I could think about as I watched her undress was Abilene. How Abilene’s bare skin would look under the full moonlight, how Abilene would move through the salt-kissed air as she walked up to me, waiting for her on the bed.
“Your own personal porn star,” Uncle Nash continues, walking back over to his chair with another glass of whiskey, this one much fuller than the first. “And you didn’t even appreciate it.”
The living room is cavernous, but it feels like the walls are squeezing in around me. Uncle Nash is too close, and I swear I can hear his body working. His blood beating, his lungs expanding. It’s too much noise.
