Page 24 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

Now, as she drove home twenty years later, Nikki sneaked a glance at her aunt, sitting ramrod straight, and noted the firm, unhappy set of her jaw, the fist balled in her lap. She couldn’t help but wonder just how much truth there had been in her mother’s bitter prediction. Certainly a lot of pain had ensued.

And, she knew, it wasn’t over yet.

The city was rising before them, rolling acres of lowland giving way to a sprawling suburbia, houses with yards lining the streets. Around the periphery of the town she drove until she returned to the old manor on Canterbury Lane where Alexander had brought his wife thirty-odd years earlier. The lots here were large, the grounds well tended, shade trees and hedgerows protecting each owner’s privacy.

Nikki remembered the times she’d spent here, sharing secrets with Hollis in her oh-so-pink bedroom, keeping mum about Elton’s fascination with a variety of drugs, most notably weed and ecstasy, and driving out to the farm outside Savannah where Aunty-Pen had kept her horses; after college, she’d continued to ride and insisted Hollis do the same.

“I’m not really into it,” Hollis, who was fair and looked very much like her mother, had admitted to Nikki.

It had been a warm summer day, and Nikki remembered it clearly because her cousin had said, “Why don’t you drive?” even though Nikki wasn’t old enough and didn’t have her license.

“For real?”

“Sure. You drive all the time with your folks, don’t you?”

“But I only have a permit.”

Hollis’s blue eyes had twinkled with a naughty devilment as she’d scooped her keys from her purse and whispered, “I won’t tell, if you don’t.”

“But Dad would kill me if—”

“If he found out? Well, he won’t,” Hollis said. “We all have our secrets, don’t we? Including my mother.” With a smirk she added, “I just found out I might have a half sibling somewhere. How about that? Can you believe that Mother actually did it with some boy while in high school and got herself knocked up?” Hollis had giggled at the thought. “It’s so rich!”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Oh, yeah. I overheard my aunt on the phone the other day.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“I don’t know if she even had it. Just that she was preggers. And I always thought that if I had a half sibling somewhere it would be from my dad.”

“What are you talking about?” Nikki had felt embarrassed and uncomfortable.

“He was hot when he was younger. Still is, I guess, but it’s weird to say about your dad.”

“Sick.”

“Enough about my twisted family, with all our skeletons neatly tucked away in their closets,” she said with a shrug. Then, eyes gleaming, she asked, “Aren’t you friends with Amity O’Henry? You know her, right, she’s in my class?” Hollis’s lips had stretched into a smile that hovered between pleased and something else, something almost wicked.

“Yeah. I like her.”

“She’s trouble, Nikki.”

“How would you know?” Hollis ran with the popular crowd, the cheerleaders and dance-team members and prom princesses. Amity didn’t. Nor did Nikki, at least not at that time.

“I hear things.” Hollis’s already arched eyebrow had raised in that “I’ve got a secret” manner that had always gotten under Nikki’s skin.

“What things?”

“Elton and his friends have all . . . you know.”

“No, I don’t.” She didn’t like the tone in Hollis’s voice. So much like Aunty-Pen’s.

“Well, if they need a blow job, they can just call Amity and she’ll oblige.”

“What!” Nikki couldn’t believe it. “That’s dumb! Stupid older boys bragging about something they only wish they could do! Sick, Hollis!”

“Oh, Nikki, grow up, would you?” Hollis had rolled her eyes. “It’s not that big of a deal except that Amity isn’t very selective, if you know what I mean. She’s just like her mother.”

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