It used to be they were a phone call away. Then in the street. Now in the driveway.

“What do they know that we don’t?” Dad asks. “Why haven’t they made an official announcement? The man was under Kit Lamb’s bed. What more do they need?”

“How the fuck should I know the real story?” Natasha says. She’s impatient. Scared. Not least of all because she wasn’t expecting her mom to react this way. It almost feels like, by telling her mom the same thing she told her baller teammates, she activated something in her. Like she wound up a talking doll. How long has her mom known what she’s about to say? And why does it feel like, not only is this the first time Quincy is going to say it but that the alcohol she grips tightly is more responsible for the telling than the fact that people are dying?

How long has Quincy wanted to tell this story?

And why was she scared to tell it?

Yet…it’s more like Quincy is marveling at her own thoughts. Her memories. Whatever she knows.

“I never tied the two together…” she says.

“What, Mom? The two what?”

Her mom is the one person who gets under Natasha’s skin. Natasha acts tough with her friends. And in a way, she is tough with them. She’s funny, crass, speaks her mind. But there’s something about Quincy Manska that drives her nuts. Dad says it’s because they’re alike. But Dad can piss off.

“Do you know the real story?” Natasha asks.

Quincy does the thing that shuts Natasha up. The only thing.

She looks at her like she’s dumb.

“Yes…maybe,” Quincy says. She’s wearing a white nightgown, got a tall vodka-cranberry in hand. Quincy Manska is the smartest person in most rooms. To Natasha’s dismay, they both know this.

But Natasha respects the hell out of it too. Especially when push comes to shove. And right now, it has.

“So…” Natasha says. “Talk to me. Please.”

Because Natasha is done playing around.

Quincy breathes deep, makes a face Natasha has never seen her wear before. Looks like the face one might make before leaping from a cliff, having told nobody of the decision to do so beforehand.

Yet she looks at peace with her decision to speak, if only because there’s no other choice now.

“If I have all this right,” she says. “And I’m just putting it together…then she wasn’t any saint. Get that idea out of your head right now. This isn’t the story of some poor eccentric woman who ran into a bunch of closed-minded conservatives. Daphne was…” She marvels again, seems to be piecing old broken memories together. Yet she becomes convinced of them as soon as they are restored. “Daphne was evil.”

“What do you mean? You knew her?”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this but…I know I’m right now. Nat…I crossed paths with her when I was a little girl.”

“What? What the fuck? Mom, how much do you know about this? How real is—”