She’s fine, she’s faking, it’s not that bad.

Jane died in my bed, huddled next to me, her body glowing so hot I could hardly hold her.

But I did hold her. I held her as she gasped for breath and shook and finally went still.

Pneumonia. It might have killed her even if the Brocks had gotten her to a hospital. She was so weak already.

I would never know.

So it had felt like a kind of poetic justice, that night that it was just me and Mr. Brock in the house. Mrs. Brock was at bingo, and by then, I was the only foster kid in their care.

He’d been watching TV, a baseball game, and some call had pissed him off. Sometimes that had meant one of us got hit, but that night, he’d just stood up, screaming at the television, his face red.

I’d been sitting at the kitchen table, filling out paperwork for a shitty fast-food job when he’d suddenly gasped, clutched his chest.

He’d had heart issues for a while. I never knew what was actually wrong with him, but I’d assumed a diet of whiskey, fries, and Pure Fucking Evil hadn’t helped.

He had pills for it. Big ones in an orange bottle, and he’d choked that word out as he turned to me, his face the color of old milk.

Pills.

I hadn’t gotten them.

He’d hit his knees, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, his eyes bugging out of his head.

Mr. Brock wasn’t a big man, wasn’t much bigger than me, really, but I still liked him there on his knees. I’d gotten up, stood over him while he stared at me, uncomprehending.

The word had come so easily to my lips.

Die.

I wanted him to die. For Jane.

So, I stood there, and watched him struggle and gasp, and when he tried to reach for his pills, just there on the little table between the two recliners, I’d taken them. Held them in front of him. Let him see that I had them.

And then I’d gone into the kitchen and poured them down the sink with shaking hands, turning on the garbage disposal for good measure.

I only left the house when I was sure he’d stopped breathing.

For the past five years, I’ve run from that night, from the knowledge that surely people remembered I was the only one at home when Mr. Brock dropped dead.

But I’d forgotten how disposable people like me really were. No one connected me leaving with him dying.

He had a heart condition, after all. And Helen had simply left town. She’d been just shy of her eighteenth birthday, a high school graduate, ageing out of the system already.

I’d left with Jane’s ID in my purse. Jane, who looked enough like me to be my real sister.

And I’d started over.

Successfully, it turned out.

Smiling, I start the car and head home. My new home.

My real home.

27

“Which dress should I wear?” I ask, and Eddie glances at the options I’ve laid out on the bed.

There are three: a simple cream-colored sheath dress, a sexier black number, and then a dress I’d ordered off of Southern Manors. Deep plum purple, green leaves embroidered on the Peter Pan collar, the sleeves capped. It’s way more twee than anything I’d usually wear, but I was curious what the dresses Bea had designed were like, and I wanted to see if Eddie would recognize it. And if he did, would he say anything?

But if the dress is familiar at all, he doesn’t show it. He just nods at the cream one and says, “I like that.”

So I head off to my first country club cocktail party feeling slightly like a sacrificial virgin. The dress that had looked so sophisticated on the hanger is actually a little too long for me, the hem hitting me below my knees, the high collar a little too high, nearly bumping my jaw and making my skin look sallow.

The Country Club of Birmingham is a beautiful, tasteful Tudor-style building set far back on a wide green lawn and surrounded by old-growth trees. As we walk up the drive, I take in the stone and wooden timbers, the lights spilling out from the windows, and move closer to Eddie. We’ve done fancy restaurants and the church function, but this feels like some new test, one I’m not sure I’ve studied enough for.

Even in the evening, the summer air is so hot and heavy it feels like trying to breathe directly over a humidifier, but the flowers in the heavy planters just outside the front door are bright pink, and everything feels so vital, so alive.

Everything except for the people currently filing into the room.

They’re all clones of the people I’ve seen in the village, or at the Methodist church’s silent auction: slightly florid men in suits, excellently dressed women in bright colors with hair that isn’t just blond or brown, but a thousand different shades of both, created by an expensive hairdresser.

The cost of the jewelry in this one room is probably the GNP of some small countries. Maybe even some not-so-small ones.

There are tables along the back wall loaded down with food, and waiters are circulating with trays of canapés, but no one seems to be eating.

Drinking, though? That, they’re doing plenty of.

It doesn’t surprise me that the bar is set up in the middle of the room, creating a hub for guests to mill around. And when I get close, I can see that there’s nothing but top-shelf stuff on offer.

Eddie’s hand is a warm weight on my lower back, reminding me that I belong there, and I smile up at him.

Yet it’s situations like these—seeing him here amongst these other men, the husbands of the women I’ve been studying so intently for the last few months—that remind me how much he stands out. How different he seems.

“Drink?” he asks me, and I nod.

“White wine, please.”

He makes his way through the crowd around the bar, leaving me to stand there awkwardly, my hands clasped in front of me.

“Jane!”

I see Emily smiling at me, gesturing with one elegant hand.

She places one skinny tanned arm around my shoulders and pulls me into the group standing there in their cocktail dresses, and I wait for the surge of triumph to come, the smugness that I’ve transformed myself from dog-walker to one of them in just a handful of months.

But I don’t feel anything like that. Mostly, I just want to go home.

“Jaaane,” Emily drawls tipsily, “you know everyone now, don’t you?”

“Hi, girls,” I say brightly, and they all smile in return.

I’m one of them now.