“I believe you,” Carter replied, not looking at Kennedy. It was as practiced as Kennedy’s saying she didn’t remember anything. Though Carter couldn’t admit it to herself until the last visit, she had always doubted Kennedy. Gerry was an absolutist about Kennedy’s innocence, as much as the Kimbersons were absolutists about her guilt. For Carter, doubt felt honest, liberating. It was probably doubt that had brought her and Everett together.
Carter scooted off the bed and walked out. She went and retrieved the wicker laundry basket from the spare room—her old room. She stood in the blank room and took three long breaths, before she brought it back in and laid it down beside Kennedy on the bed. She told her Gerry had paid for them—wouldn’t let her put them in the room, of course. Carter reached out and unfolded two blouses. She showed her sister the pants, which sat low; the thick belt, which could be worn with the buckle off to the side. Kennedy’s eyes went from hard to dewy.
“These are nice,” she said, reaching out to touch the sleeve of one of the shirts. It was the one Carter had known she would most like.
When Carter told her to try it on, Kennedy said maybe later, and Carter wondered if she didn’t want to be naked in front of her.
“What are you doing for work?” Kennedy asked.
“Nothing real. Temping. Pharmaceutical advertising, but it’s just answering phones really. Do you remember Ryan Whittles?”
“Ryan Shittles from your history class?”
Carter nodded. Haley had come to Carter’s rescue in history class. That was how they’d all become friends. Ryan Whittles had been teasing Carter relentlessly, calling her tight-ass, asking why she couldn’t be more like Kennedy.
Carter told Kennedy that at her last job some coworkers had gone out for nachos on a Friday. When she and her manager went up to the bar to order more food and beverages there was Ryan Whittles. In front of her manager he’d put his finger right in her face, drunk, and yelled, ‘You can change your name, but you’re still a fucking Wynn.’”
They didn’t see Gerry standing in the bedroom doorway. “What was wrong with being a Wynn?” he asked. The women turned. Neither answered him.
* * *
—
Gerry opened up a beer for himself and announced it was the one drink a day he’d negotiated with his doctor.
Kennedy exchanged a quick glance with Carter; they called it their radio: those moments when they had simultaneous thoughts. It was the first type like that to pass between them in years.
Gerry began to pace around the sitting room again as Carter asked whether they could eat yet. “You showed her the clothes. What should we do about her hair?”
Kennedy answered that she hadn’t really thought about hair or clothes much. The biggest concern the other women had inside about fashion was how to hide their WP tattoos for their parole hearings.
“What does that mean, WP?” Carter asked.
“‘White Power,’” Kennedy said as casually as if she were discussing a new movie. “But Heron Valley is easy time. We never had a big problem with the gangs. Just when country girls transferred in and caused shit.”
Gerry looked at his daughters with horror. None of these words had been said in the Wynn house in any context before.
“What kind of shit would they cause?” Carter asked.
Gerry choked on his beer. He coughed and set the bottle down to thump his chest. When it had passed he said, “Don’t talk about that stuff when the guests come. Talk about good things.”
“What good things?” Carter asked, knowing it was what Kennedy was thinking.
“She got her diploma. Taught classes. Wrote short stories.”
“It’s not like I was a TA at Sarah Lawrence,” Kennedy interjected.
“Just be Kennedy for them. Normal Kennedy.”
Kennedy and Carter glanced at each other.
Kennedy tipped her head back and looked at the ceiling. “No one is coming.”
Alex said, “I showed up.”
Gerry gestured with two hands out, as if the young man’s presence reaffirmed everything. “They’re coming.”
“To hang out with the reason they’ve been embarrassed of their name? No one is coming and I don’t need them. You do,” Kennedy said.
Carter watched the firm set of Kennedy’s jaw. She could almost feel her back teeth grinding. It had only taken an hour for the breakdown to begin.
* * *
—
As they ate the now-tepid lasagna (one with meat and one without, for Carter), Alex said and did nothing but look at her. The only one talking was her father, a little louder than necessary to make up for everyone else’s silence.
“It’s a fine name, Wynn,” Gerry argued, picking up on what they’d said upstairs. “I never understood why you took your mother’s name. Nothing to be ashamed of. Now, Emmett Kimberson. That’s a name to be ashamed of.”
“You mean Everett.” Carter touched her clavicle.
“What?”
“His name. You got it wrong.”
Kennedy looked at Carter. Another radio moment that was a surprise for both of them.
Gerry jabbed at the air with his fork. “I’m just saying, here’s a fool that’s representative of the way this country is going. Do you know what he wasted the money on? Turned twenty-one, got one of these sucker mortgages, no money down, preapproved. That’s not how you buy property.”
The women watched Gerry cutting his lasagna with a knife even though it was so soft by this point it seemed unnecessary. He said Everett Kimberson was the whole damn reason the market was collapsing, people who think they can have anything and not work for it.
“Who are you, uh, talking about?” Alex said, possibly worried that Gerry was now talking about him.
“Haley’s brother,” Kennedy answered before Carter could respond.
Carter’s phone began buzzing and she knew who it was without looking. She dug into her purse below the table with steady hands. She found the phone and held the buzzing thing—Rochester—between her legs, squeezing, trying to silence it.
Chapter 5
Berk Butler was never on time for work but that day he was meeting someone from TV. He parked outside the grocery store that bore his surname, looked in the rearview, licked his fingers, and smoothed his thick eyebrows. With his hair gone it was the last thing on his body he could remotely style.
He entered through the automatic doors and went to the office, though he mostly worked on the loading dock and only sometimes floor managed, taking care of cider displays, samples, and banners. Come on, everyone, push them apples, his younger brother, Wyatt, said whenever he did a walk-through at the store—their flagship and one of twenty-four in the state. With each repeated instruction about fruit sales from his boss, Berk imagined Sisyphus pushing a giant, soul-crushing apple up the hill.