“I didn’t do that to you. The plant did that to you.”
She blocked his way. “It’s because of your feathers.”
“They’re part of my hair. They can’t do anything to you.”
He knew. He had to know.
“If you thought I did this to you, why were you keeping my feathers?” he asked.
“I thought it would give me something on you,” she said.
“Something on me,” he said. “So when you came here, it was to try to get me to fix that.” Not a question.
He looked at her, and the truth sank through her, a stone through a river. He’d thought she’d come here because she wanted him.
The night she first came here, she was so quick to hold down thinking of him that way. Now something ticked inside her, an urgency to tell him that yes, she came here about the scar, but she had already wanted him that night. She should’ve come here for no reason other than that she wanted him.
If she’d known how his hands would feel as they spread over her body, or how his mouth tasted like black salt, or that he was beautiful in ways that made him ugly to his family, she would have. She would’ve left the hospital still in her blue gown and gone looking for him.
But she could see the last few days crossing his face. The two of them scrambling over each other in the front seat of his grandfather’s truck. Her fingers catching in the feathers under his hair. Him holding her in the high branches, and her letting him, giving him her body so completely that she would’ve fallen if he’d let go.
“Cluck,” she said.
“This was all because you thought I could take that off you?” he asked. “Wow, you really know how to commit, don’t you?”
The place where his hands had slid over the small of her back went cold. Now he thought she’d kissed him, cupped each of his red-striped feathers in her palms, for no other reason than that she wanted the mark off her arm.
“Luc,” she said, calling him his real name without thinking, some wild grasp at getting to him.
All he gave her back was a hurt smile that said he thought it was cheap for her to try it, and almost funny that she thought it would work.
“You and your family,” he said. “You really think I have nothing better to do than curse you? What kind of old wives’ tales do you all tell each other?”
“Our old wives’ tales? You’re one to talk. You won’t even admit you’re left-handed.”
“I’m not.” He almost yelled it.
She picked up a pinecone and threw it at him. He caught it with his left hand, his thumb and index finger gripping the scales.
He hurled it at the ground.
“If you don’t believe me,” Lace said, “ask my family why I’m not with them.”
He gave that same dry laugh. “Sure. Why don’t I just stop by? I’ll bring a salad.”
“They don’t know who you are,” she said. “My cousins sure didn’t.”
“Your cousins?” Then it registered. “The guys at the liquor store. Those were your cousins.”
“You really think I’m here to spy? Go ask my family where the pink mermaid went. They’ll tell you I’m not with them anymore. Or they’ll pretend I’m dead, or I never existed, I don’t know. Go ask them.”
Water glinted at the inner corners of his eyes. His jaw grew hard, eyes stuck on the pinecone. “I think I know enough, thanks.”
He took a step away from her.
“Cluck.” She reached out and clasped the curved-under fingers on his left hand.
“Don’t.” He pulled his hand away, not rough but decisive. Final.
Her guilt over hurting him drained away, and the empty place filled up with anger. He took every time their lips brushed, her body up against his, and threw it all out like scraps of ribbon.
“I don’t want to see you around here again,” he said.
“Or what?” Lace asked. “You’ll get the shotgun and take care of me?”
“No. That’s your family, remember?”
The burn on her forearm pulsed. He’d seen the dead crows. He knew about her uncles with the Winchester. She dug her nails into her palms, thinking of Cluck finding one of those birds, eyes dull as black beach glass.
“At least we’ve never killed anyone in your family,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Twenty years ago.”
“You’re kidding, right? Why would my family sink the trees they were performing in?”
“I’m guessing they didn’t mean to, and whatever they meant to do went wrong.”
“Like what?”
“Like drown everyone in our show,” she said. “The flooding at the lake messed up our part of the river. It was calm, and then halfway through the show it was white water. It could’ve killed half my family.”
“And the next time my family turned around, all of you had taken over the lakefront. You perform where a member of my family died. And a member of yours. You perform in your own family’s graveyard. You get that, right?”
“There wouldn’t be a graveyard if it weren’t for all of you. You killed my great-aunt’s husband. Did you know that?”
“Did you ever think your great-aunt’s husband was the one who did it?” Cluck asked. “What other reason did he have for being there?”
“The same reason your brother knew exactly what our tails looked like. He spied on us. Just like my great-uncle spied on all of you.”
Cluck dropped his hands. “I’m so glad you have it all figured out.”
Sadness crept back into his face. The feeling of wanting to kiss him struck her, hard and sudden. To show him that her touching him had been in defiance of her own family, and she had not cared. To slip back into the rhythm of her mouth and fingers responding to his.
She was hollow with the knowledge that if she had any other last name, he would’ve let her.
“For the record,” Cluck said. “Every burn you have, you can thank your family.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“My grandfather worked for the plant until your family got him fired,” he said. “If he’d been there, this wouldn’t have happened. He would’ve pushed for the damn overfill pipe. That was his job. To keep things like that from happening. You want to blame someone for that scar, blame your family. Because they did this to you before you were born.”
“My family’s not the one who put the net in the river,” she said.
One slow blink, and the anger in his face fell away. “What?”
Lace thought of Magdalena, fighting the nylon net, and Lace fighting one of her own, a string of their last air bubbles floating across the eight years between their half-drownings.
“The night you found me,” Lace said. “I’d gotten caught in a net. If I hadn’t, I would’ve gotten out of the water a lot faster. I could’ve gotten home.”
“How do you know it was a net?” he asked.
“Last time I checked, blue nylon doesn’t grow in rivers.”
His eyes went over the ground, like he was looking for those bright threads among the leaves.
“But don’t take my word for it,” she said. “We’re all liars anyway, right?”
The corners of his eyes tensed, the anger coming back.
When he left she didn’t follow him. The feather burn vibrated on her forearm, searing into her, claiming its place on her skin.
Qui se fait brebis le loup le mange.
He who makes himself a ewe, the wolf eats.
He got out all the white peacock feathers. The ones he’d hidden in trunks, under the mattress, under the false bottom of a wooden drawer. He’d burn them all. They’d be nothing but ash. The next time he went to Elida Park, he’d leave the leucistic peacock’s eyespots where they fell.
Nothing settled. Nothing stayed still.
He’d brought a Paloma into his family. He’d let her sleep in the same trailer with Clémentine. He’d held her body against his, her mouth on his.