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“You’re drunk, Billy.”
“Yeah, and? I got out of fucking jail, no thanks to you,” he says. “I deserve to have a party. What the fuck is this even? You’re getting married? To a cop. That cop?”
He spits on the grass.
Ganny gasps.
“You need to leave,” I say. “This is not your property. You’re trespassing.”
“You even sound like a cop,” Billy gives a wry laugh. “I can’t believe it, Marci. After what they did to Dad?”
I clasp the sides of my dress.
“Billy, I’ve done my best to help you. I’m still trying, but I didn’t have the money to bail you out again.”
I’ve been trying. I want to scream it at him, but I’m not going to make a scene here.
“Done your best?” Billy takes a swig of vodka. “Done your best to do what’s good for you and nobody else.”
“That’s not true, Billy,” I say, and my voice raises a little. “Don’t you think that’s unfair? I fucking raised you when Dad died. You don’t think it’s painful for me to watch you piss your life away and get in trouble and try, and try, and fuckingtryto help you? I look like an idiot because I keep trying to make things better for you, but how can I do that when you won’t make things better for yourself?”
Billy recoils. His bottom lip quivers.
“I try to,” he whispers. “I try to. It’s hard.”
My heart. I can’t do this in front of the Taylors.
“Billy, you need to get your act cleaned up. I want to help you, but you need to help yourself too. I need to know that you’ll take this seriously. That you’ll look for a job. That you’ll try to do therightthing.”
“It’s easy for you,” Billy says, swinging the vodka bottle. “Don’t judge me when it’s easy for you. You had a dad for longer than I did! You had more than me.”
This conversation is going nowhere fast. And my temper has flared too hot.
“You need to leave. Call me when you’re ready to take responsibility for yourself.”
I walk past him and into the house, letting the screen door slam behind me.
Twenty-Seven
JESSE
I knockon the upstairs bathroom door in Ganny’s house.
“Angel?” I murmur. “Angel, are you in there?”
No answer.
“If you want to leave, we can leave. We did what we came to do.”
“Is he gone?”
“Yeah.”
The door opens, and Marci’s standing there in that lacy dress, her eyes red from crying. She dabs a tissue under her eyes and checks her makeup isn’t ruined, sniffing.
“Sorry,” she says. “This is not… This was not how it was meant to go today.”
“We can leave,” I say.
