His mother was smiling down at him. She’d had stunning good looks, with her tanned skin, high cheekbones, and long raven hair. Jack had gotten his coloring from her.
But shadows laced her gray eyes as she introduced him to two visitors.
Maman calls me over to meet them: a middle-aged woman and a girl around my age, maybe eight or so. Everyone says Maman and I are dirt poor, but this pair doan look like they’re doing much better.
“Jack, this is Eula and her daughter, Clotile. Clotile’s your half sister.”
She’d been tiny, all skinny legs and big soulful eyes. Sadness filled me because I knew Clotile’s ultimate fate.
Less than nine years from that day, she would survive an apocalypse—only to be captured by Vincent and Violet.
Clotile had escaped them, just long enough to shoot herself. Jack still didn’t know why. Had she committed suicide to give him a chance to get free? Or because she couldn’t live with what the Lovers had done to her?
I tell Maman, “I doan have a sister.” I got a younger half brother though. Earlier this summer, Maman had driven us all the way to Sterling to show me my father’s mansion. She said it should’ve been ours. We’d watched Radcliffe and his other son, Brandon, tossing a football in the front yard.
My half brother kind of looked like me. But this girl’s scrawny with light brown hair and pale skin.
“You two got the same father. Radcliffe.” Maman can barely say his name.
“Maybe, Hélène.” Eula snorts. “I’m giving it one in three.”
Clotile gazes at the ceiling. I get the sense she’s embarrassed that she can’t pin down who her père is—but kind of used to it too.
Eula strides toward me and grasps my face in a way I hate. “Oh, ouais, you got his blood, for sure. Not that it matters anyway. You’ll never get a dime out of him.” She drops her hand. “You and Clotile go play. Your mère and me are goan to have a couple of drinks.”
When Maman drinks she turns into a different person. I give her a look that says, Doan do this. But she gazes away. What’d I expect, me?
Clotile takes my hand with a wide smile, and we head outside. She’s sweet enough, I suppose. And she can’t help being my sister.
I take her out onto the floating pier I’ve pieced together, showing her how to check traps. She watches in amazement, like I’m turning water into wine or something.
Out of the blue, she says, “I think you are my big brother.”
I doan know how I feel about that. She’s not bad company, doan talk a lot. Her stomach’s been grumbling, but she woan admit she’s hungry. At least I’ve learned to feed myself, can hunt and fish and cook my take. I could help her out now and again.
“Maybe I am.” Then I scowl, kicking a trap back in the water. Just what I need—another mouth to feed!
A loud truck rumbles down our muddy track of a driveway, parking in front of the cabin. Two men stomp inside, hailing greetings, making our mothers laugh.
I can hear a metal opener tinking against beer bottles, can hear the throat of a bourbon fifth against a shot glass. They turn up music on a radio I “found” a couple months back and pair off.
The zydeco doan disguise what’s happening inside. For the first time, Clotile looks upset.
I figure I’d do just about anything to keep this scrawny little fille from crying. “We can borrow a pirogue and paddle out farther. I got more traps, me.”
She latches on to this like a bass on a line, and we doan get back for hours.
Near sunset, we creep up the cabin steps. “Stay behind me, girl,” I whisper. When Maman’s beaux get drunk, they always need to swing their fists—usually at her or me.
Inside is all a mess. Eula and a man are naked and passed out on the couch I got to sleep on. Clotile shrugs at that sight like she doan care, but her cheeks are red, her eyes glassy.
Maman’s door is open—I hear a man snoring from the bed—but I know better than to glance in that direction.
Beside the couch is my stack of library books; liquor’s spilled over them. It makes me so angry, like I need to swing my fists.
Clenching my jaw, I snag a few beers out of the icebox. Clotile doan miss a beat, grabbing the bottle opener. We head back out to the pier. As we watch the sun set between two cypress trees, she pops open beers for us, like she’s been doing this for a while.
I never have, but figure, Why not? I sip, not sold on the taste. I suppose it’ll grow on me.
By the second one, I feel great, relaxed in my own skin. “Clotile?”
“Hmm?” She looks mellow, buzzed herself.
“Everybody says we got no hope of goan anywhere. You ever think we deserve better than the Basin?”
Without hesitation, she says, “Non.”
I ponder it over another sip. “Ouais, me neither.”
My eyes blurred with tears.
Yet Jack had made plans to get out of the Basin and fight for a better life. He’d intended to fly in the face of everything he’d grown up believing.
That struck me as unimaginably brave.
Did he still feel he didn’t deserve better? If Clotile had ever dared to hope for more, she’d been punished with something much, much worse than Basin life.
With me as a lingering witness to his thoughts, Jack’s mind turned to another sliver of time.
He and I were walking hand in hand, just after we’d had sex for the first and only time—and right before we’d gone into battle against the cannibals.
’Bout to face shittier odds than I ever have, stone-cold sober, and I never felt so good. Is this what being at peace means? No damn wonder everyone wants to feel this way.
Evie glances up at me with those blue eyes, and she’s so fucking beautiful I nearly trip over my feet. Her scent is honeysuckle, which means she’s all but purring. Her lips curve, and that smile hits me harder than any punch. She’s got no regrets.
Good. ’Cause I’m never letting her go. I might reach too high to have her, but she doan think so. I want to say something, to tell her how I feel about what we just did. Everything I think to say could be taken the wrong way.
So I squeeze her hand and keep it simple. “À moi, Evangeline.” Mine.
She promises me: “Always.”
And I believe her.
“Hey, blondie!” Finn called from below. “Is this a no-boys-allowed tree house?”