“Go home, Delilah,” he said.

And so I did, because beneath it all, even after everything I’d done, I was still a good girl who wanted to do the right thing and who listened when told what to do.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Ruth

14 May 1994

Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa

I’m pouring another drink, my fifth or sixth of the day. It’s been two days since I was forced to give the baby back and I find that booze takes the edge off the worst of my fury at Dee and some of the fury at myself. It doesn’t help that I keep reaching for the phone wanting to call Vince because he’s the person I always speak to when I’m most wounded. Remembering each time that I can’t speak to him just makes me pour the drinks stronger.

“Jirre, man. Check out the kwaai BMW M3!”

The voice coming from the front yard startles me. I peek out the window to discover two men in camo gear getting out of a bakkie and walking toward Vince’s convertible. By the looks of lust on their faces, the car is giving them major hard-ons. Blond, broad-chested, and taller than six foot, they both look like mirror images of Maynard Coetzee, the town’s golden boy who I’d briefly had a fling with when I was seventeen. They have to be his sons.

“Killer mag wheels and spoiler. I wonder if it has a proper racing steering wheel,” the one with the cap replies in Afrikaans as he leans in for a closer look.

“It does,” I say, opening the front door and stepping outside, “but the car’s just been cleaned, so try not to drool on it.”

He spins around, snatching his hands back from the door, and smiles when he sees me. “Hello, tannie.” Being called “auntie” by someone who’s in their thirties rankles me but I know they don’t mean anything by it. “Is this your husband’s car?” he asks without any hint of sarcasm or irony.

“No, it’s mine,” I brazenly lie. You’re not going to win any poker tournaments if you’re not good at bluffing.

“Regtig?” I nod and he carries on. “A small lady like you driving a big car like this? So, what’s the fastest you’ve done in it?”

“Oh . . . ” I think back to the dusty Karoo expanse on the way here. “About two hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.”

He whistles appreciatively just as the one without a cap spits out, “Kak, man! There’s no way.”

I just shrug and smile mysteriously. “I’m Ruth, by the way. And you’re which of the Coetzee brood, exactly?”

“I’m Klein Maynard and this is my brother, Henning,” the one with the cap says. “Klein” is the way Afrikaners preface names they share with older members of their family; it means “small” and is their way of saying “junior.”