Black Wings by Megan Hart

Author:Megan Hart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flame Tree Publishing
Published: 2018-12-03T12:24:32+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

It had taken Marian about forty minutes to get Briella into bed and asleep. By the time she got downstairs, every nerve felt raw. Her hands were shaking. She went into the kitchen, ready to tear Tommy apart, but stopped at the sight of him and Dean tipping back bottles of beer. When they both turned to look at her with almost identical expressions, all the fight went out of her.

“Give me one of those,” she said, pointing at the cluster of beer bottles in the Styrofoam cooler, and grabbed a jumbo bag of chips from the cupboard.

They were seconds-quality in a plain white bag. Dean brought them home from work by the case. Marian had lost her taste for them years ago, but right now she was dying for something greasy. She tore open the bag and dumped half the contents into a mixing bowl and put it on the table. She took a seat between them.

Tommy plucked a dewy, glistening bottle from the cooler at his feet and twisted off the top for her. “Is she okay?”

Marian looked at the cooler. “Where did that come from?”

“I ran out and got it,” Tommy said.

“And you came back here with it? Not what I expected, to be honest. I thought you’d be long gone.” She didn’t know if she should be pissed off or impressed. She tipped her head back to let some cool, golden liquid bite its way down the back of her throat.

“I figured you might need backup,” Tommy said. “The kid was out of control.”

Marian set the bottle on the table hard enough to make beer splash out of the narrow top. “What the hell, Tommy? What happened? I give you permission to take her for the first time in, like, forever, and you’re not even gone three hours before you bring her home without so much as a phone call to warn us? What the hell?”

Dean put a comforting hand on her shoulder, squeezing it, but Marian pulled away. There’d been too much of a conspiratorial expression on both their faces when she’d come into the kitchen, and she didn’t like it. Dean and Tommy weren’t friends, but they sure as hell looked like they were both up to something.

“It was my mom,” Tommy said, but stopped to drink some beer.

The slow rotation of the world seemed to stop right then, abruptly. Marian scowled, already furious. Already guilty. She never ought to have let him take Briella to his parents’ house. “What about your mother?”

Tommy didn’t answer at first. He shook his head as though in defeat. He drank more beer. Shook his head again, mouth opening and closing as he fought for words that wouldn’t release themselves.

Marian had plenty of words for him, but she too was having a hard time giving them a voice. To give herself time, she dug into the bowl of chips and settled a handful in her palm. She plucked out the darkest, burned ones and pushed them toward Dean.

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