But she reacted in mild surprise. “Oh, really? I didn’t know that. I’ll have to check it out.”

I stared out my window, doing my best to banish my thoughts of Trey, and the rush of heat that accompanied even just a brief flash of him across my mind. But what he’d told me about her loomed heavily on my mind; she didn’t look like she was ailing so much that she needed a kidney transplant. Not that I had any idea what someone in need of an organ would look like.

Sensing that I was holding out on her, at a stoplight, she said, “I don’t know if you’ve been in touch with Trey, or what, but if you know how to reach him, he should know that half of my inheritance is technically his.”

With my eyes fixed straight ahead on the road, I tried to keep any kind of reaction from showing on my face.

She continued, “I mean it. No strings.”

Thinking about Trey’s black eye, I couldn’t resist snapping back at her, “How in the world would you share half of your inheritance with Trey without your mom finding out?” Back in January, Violet told me that her father had clued her in about her secret half brother, but Violet’s mom had no idea that Trey Emory, Willow’s most infamous juvenile delinquent, was her husband’s illegitimate son.

Violet slowly eased on the gas when the light changed. “My dad could find a way,” she stated.

“But no strings, right?” I challenged. “Because I’d say a kidney definitely qualifies as a string.”

We’d reached the corner of Martha Road, and Violet pulled over to the curb to let the engine idle. She turned toward me, and I dared to glance at her face. She looked truly flabbergasted. Offended, almost. “What are you talking about? Did Trey tell you that? That he’ll get half of my inheritance if he agrees to give me a kidney?”

I shrugged, trying to keep a level head. Now that I’d made the mistake of revealing that I knew about that proposition, I had to make sure it didn’t seem like I’d just heard about it two hours ago, from Trey’s own lips, here in Willow. “We talk on the phone, you know. Every Tuesday.”

Violet blinked twice as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What the hell… my dad, I swear.” After a pause, she continued, “Half of the inheritance is his, if he wants it. All he has to do is agree to a blood test to confirm paternity. There was a clause in my grandmother’s will about Trey, and it turns out for the last two years, that’s been why my dad and my uncle have been fighting. I guess my uncle didn’t take too kindly to the idea that my grandmother cut his kids out of her will, but provided for my father’s secret son.”

I thought back to what Violet had said in January about how she’d come into her inheritance. The money her grandmother had left in her name, as well as the Simmons family mansion, were a bribe of sorts—because along with those material things, Violet’s grandmother had bequeathed to her the awful burden of having to condemn someone to death with each cycle of the moon. It didn’t make sense to me that Grandmother Simmons would have included Trey in the will and shafted her other son’s children unless, like Violet, Trey had inherited some kind of obligation related to the curse.