“—but not in your case.” Sun paused for dramatic effect, then looked at her daughter from behind sad eyes. “Honey, I didn’t want to tell you this until you were older.” She placed a gentle hand on Auri’s arm, infusing her expression with concern and something akin to heartbreak. “But I have no choice. Auri, you were born with a horrible, ghastly disfigurement.”
“Okay, this is new.”
“You know. Down there. In your nether parts.”
Auri gazed out the window. “Does our insurance cover therapy?”
“Trust me when I say it’s something you never, ever want a boy to see.”
“Too late. Scarred for life.”
“Especially a boy with a penis.”
“People say that, the whole scarred-for-life thing, but I don’t think they really mean it.”
“You just don’t want to open yourself up to that kind of ridicule.”
“I, on the other hand—”
“That kind of ostracism.”
She turned to her mother in a huff. “This conversation is making me very uncomfortable.”
“Okay, I’ll stop, but if anything happens, just ask yourself, WWLSD?”
“Mom—”
“No, I mean it. Anytime you get into a hairy situation, ask yourself: What would Lisbeth Salander do?” She gave her daughter a minute, then prompted her. “Well?”
After a heavy sigh, Auri replied. “She’d cut a bitch.”
“Exactly. And if that doesn’t work?”
Another sigh. “She’d set a bitch on fire.”
“Precisely. And if that doesn’t work?”
“Mom,” Auri whined, shifting in her seat.
“If that doesn’t work?”
“Fine. She’d eviscerate a bitch’s online presence and get him or her sent to prison for kiddie porn.”
Sun placed her hands over her heart. “I’m just . . . I’m so proud of you.”
“Can I go now?”
“Absolutely.” When Auri opened the door, Sun added, “Just as soon as you tell me what’s really bothering you.”
Normally, the mere mention of Auri’s hero, Lisbeth Salander, cheered her up. Sun had closed with her best material and . . . nothing. Absolutely nothing.
No way would she let the kid go now. If she had to take off yet another day from work, so be it. The last time her daughter had such a drastic about-face, the last time Auri hid what was really going on beneath her dangerously intelligent surface, she was seven years old, and the outcome almost ended in the worst kind of tragedy imaginable.
“Nothing’s wrong, Mom.”
Sun leaned forward and put her fingers on a switch on the dashboard. “Have you heard the siren on this baby?”
Auri’s hands shot up in surrender. “Oh, my god, okay.”
Having won, Sun leaned back and gave Auri a minute to compose herself.
After closing the door so no one would hear, she said softly, “It’s just, I know how you worry.”
Sun’s chest inched tighter around her heart, but she forced her expression to stay neutral.
“And my asthma has been bad, and I know that really bothers you.”
That did it. “Sweetheart, your asthma doesn’t bother me. I mean, I feel horrible for you, but . . .” She thought back to the morning she’d found Auri passed out in the bathroom not two weeks earlier. “When I found you on the floor—”
“I know. I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Auri,” Sun said, exasperated. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” she asked, leaning away as though suddenly self-conscious.
“Every time you have an attack, every time you get sick, you apologize. Like it’s somehow your fault.”
Auri crossed her arms, her shoulders concaving. “I know. I just . . . I don’t want you to be put out.”
“Oh, honey.” Sun leaned over and draped an arm over her daughter’s wilting shoulders. “Why would you even think such a thing?”
“I just don’t want to be a problem.”
Sun closed her eyes and blocked out the vise crushing her chest. Auri had always been this way. She’d always apologized for getting sick. Or spilling milk. Or, hell, even tripping. What kind of kid apologized for tripping?
And it all started that pivotal period Sun referred to as the Dark Age. Before that summer, she’d had no idea a child, especially one so young, could become clinically depressed. She’d had no idea a child, most especially one so young, could become self-destructive.
How bad did things have to be to convince a seven-year-old, a seven-year-old, to contemplate taking her own life?
The reality suffocated Sunshine every time she let her thoughts drift back to that summer. It still haunted her to the very depths of her soul. And while she and Auri were about as close as a mother and daughter could be, there was a part of her child that Sunshine had never seen. A shadow. A darkness behind the light that had become her reason for breathing.
She swore she’d never let things get that bad again. She had no choice but to get to the bottom of this. And she was hardly above blackmail. Obvs. “What’s bothering you, hon?”
Auri fidgeted with her nails. “It’s stupid.”
“Hey, if you can’t be stupid in front of your mother, who can you be stupid in front of?”
“I guess.”
“Spill.”
Auri looked out the window again, ignoring the kids gawking, and said softly, “Ever since the New Year’s Eve party at the lake—”
She knew it. She should never have let her go.
“—everyone at school thinks I’m a narc.”
Her asthma had been getting steadily worse for the last . . . wait.
Sun stilled when her daughter’s words sank in. She blinked in surprise, then asked, “I’m sorry, a narc?”
“Two of your deputies showed up and confiscated the keg.”
“They had a keg?” Sun asked, her pitch rising an octave.
“And someone said it had to be me because my mom was going to be the new sheriff and the deputies had never shown up before and—”
“Where’d they get a keg?”
“—and so I probably told my mommy on them.” She’d added air quotes to Sun’s title.
“I swear, if—” Then it all made sense. Her BFF’s New Year’s Eve party. She’d wondered where he’d scored a keg that late at night. “That’s where he got all that beer.”
“Who?”
“Quincy.”
Quincy Cooper had been Sun’s best friend since kindergarten. He’d grown a bit since then, however. He was now a cross between a refrigerator and a bank vault door. And he was one of her deputies. What were the odds?
She winked at Auri. “You get enough beer in that boy and he’ll strip.”
“Mom!” She pulled out her inhaler and took a hit.
“Sorry, hon.” Sun switched back into mama-bear mode. “Who? Who would say such a thing about you?” She leaned toward her. “Just give me a name.”
“I don’t have one. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Everyone’s saying it now. You can’t arrest everyone.”