“Are you okay?” Kate asked quietly.
Tully relived it all in those few words. Tears stung her eyes, blurred her vision.
Once again, Kate hugged her. Tully let herself be comforted for the first time since she was little. When she finally drew back, she tried to smile. “I’m drowning you.”
“We should tell someone.”
“No way. They’d say it was my fault. This is our secret, okay?”
“Okay.” Kate frowned as she said it.
Tully wiped her eyes and took another drag on her cigarette. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“You looked lonely. Believe me, I know how that feels.”
“You do? But you have a family.”
“They have to like me.” Kate sighed. “The kids at school treat me like I’ve got an infectious disease. I used to have friends, but . . . you probably don’t know what in the heck I’m talking about. You’re so popular.”
“Popular just means lots of people think they know you.”
“I’d take that.”
Silence fell between them. Tully finished her cigarette and put it out. They were so different, she and Kate, as full of contrasts as this dark field bathed in moonlight, but it felt so completely easy to talk to her. Tully found herself almost smiling, and on this, the worst night of her life. That was something.
For the next hour, they sat there, talking now and then and sometimes just sitting in silence. They didn’t say anything really important or share any more secrets, they just talked.
Finally, Kate yawned and Tully stood up. “I better book.”
They got up and walked down to the road. At the mailboxes, Kate stopped. “Well. ’Bye.”
“ ’Bye.” Tully stood there a moment, feeling awkward. She wanted to hug Kate, maybe even cling to her and tell her how much this night had been helped by her, but she didn’t dare. She’d learned a thing or two about vulnerability from her mother, and she felt too fragile now to risk humiliation. Turning, she headed down to her house. Once inside, she went straight to the shower. There, with the hot water beating down on her, she thought about what had happened to her tonight—what she’d let happen because she wanted to be cool—and she cried. When she was done and the tears had turned into a hard little knot in her throat, she took the memory of this night and boxed it up. She shelved it in the back alongside memories of the times Cloud had abandoned her and immediately began working on forgetting it was there.
CHAPTER
FIVE
Kate lay awake long after Tully had left. Finally, she threw back the covers and got out of bed.
Downstairs, she found what she needed: a small statue of the Virgin Mary, a votive candle in a red glass holder, a book of matches, and her grandmother’s old rosary beads. Taking everything back up to her room, she created an altar on top of her dresser, and lit the candle.