Page 88 of Devil in Disguise
Owen wanted to be there. Heneededto be there.
He couldn’t be there, so he said, “Baby. Have you ever seen pictures of him before? Video of him? Your father?”
“No,” Dyma said, looking shaken to the core. “I’ve never … Ilooklike him. He has my dimples. Or—I guess I have his.”
And your eyes,Owen thought. It was a shock, seeing those same bright blue eyes, that laughing face, full of the kind of charisma that drew everybody in, so you couldn’t look at anyone else. How much more of a shock for Dyma?
“He’s never come around?” he asked. “Never been in contact?”
“No. That’s one reason my mom never signed up for any kind of benefits. The state would have gone after him for child support, and she was always afraid he’d come back and try to … I don’t know. Be in my life? Ha. I’ll bet that was the verylastthing he wanted. What do you want to bet he has a whole new family now that doesn’t know about me? Which suits me fine. Why would I want to know him?”
He couldn’t be there, so whatcouldhe do? He said, “How about if you and Pavani go back to your room?” He didn’t want her sitting there with those guys as she watched this. Friends or no, this had to feel like being flayed.
She said, “Yeah, but I shouldn’t …”
“You can watch there,” he said.
“Will you … do you mind still watching with me? Even though it’s probably going to be about you, too?” she asked. None of her usual confidence. None of her usual sass.
“You bet I’m watching with you. Head back over there, and get back on the call when you get there. Annabelle, stay on the line with me if you want.” He wished Harlanhadwatched. He felt like he was doing this all alone.
No,Dymawas doing this all alone. While he was waiting for her to get back on the call, though, he and Annabelle watched brief footage of the outside of the hospital where Nick had been born, and of Dyma explaining about Nick’s clubfoot. After that, some more talking, and a shot of two girls outside a dorm. The roommates. The brunette, Sydney, was saying, “Dyma’s … well, honestly, she and her mom seem a little low-class. I mean, everybody has tattoos and piercings, but she takes it to a different level. She’s a little … hard. And, like, she has a major chip on her shoulder about well-off people?” At a sympathetic question from the reporter, she went on to say, “Well, yeah. We did have to ask for her to move out, even though that was so hard to do. She kept threatening us, though. Like, seriously threatening to hurt us. And not just us. She’s especially scared of guys, to the point where we felt like we couldn’t even have our guy friends in the room. I told my mom, I’m a little worried about her. She’s … well, she’s unstable, honestly.”
“It’s really sad,” the other girl, Cassandra, put in. “We tried to help her, to invite her to do things with us, but she just wouldn’t. It’s like she’s so angry, she’s just broken.”
Back to the reporter again, asking the camera, “What scars does that kind of childhood trauma leave? Where does a girl with that background find stability? Was getting involved with an older man part of that search? We caught up with Dyma herself to learn more.”
Owen’s phone rang. Not Dyma getting patched back in on the call. His mom. He picked up and said, “Hi. What’s up?”
“Honey,” she said, “are you watching this? This program about Harlan and, well, I guess it’s about you, too. Aunt Tammy called and told me to turn it on.”
“Yep,” he said. “Oh. Hang on.” Dyma on his laptop screen, joining the call again.
“Don’t say it,” she said. “I heard that last part. I can’tbelievethis.”
There was some more, then, about his relationship with Harlan. Dyma saying from his screen, “Excuse me? Did they happen to notice that we all hadThanksgivingtogether?” His mom saying, in his ear, “But you were at the hospital when Jennifer had the baby!” Andhimsaying, “It doesn’t have to be true. It’s just a story. It doesn’t matter.”
Not to him, it didn’t. But to Dyma? Who was now telling the interviewer, looking about fifteen herself, “She loves Owen. Because he’s the most … I don’t know, the most ethical guy in the world? He’s arancher.Like, Code of the West? Never hurt a woman, always keep your word, work hard and don’t brag about it, take care of your horse before you take care of yourself? Nobody else believes all that. Nobody elsedoesall that, except guys like Owen. They do. And my mom knows it.”
He said, “See? There you go. That’s nice.”
“Who knows what the future holds?” the reporter said. Wrapping it up for the big finish, he guessed. “For Dyma’s mother, set to marry Harlan Kristiansen in the spring, with a brand-new baby boy to bring them both the joy they’ve been denied—a little boy they named Nick, after Harlan’s mother—the tangled web of scandal and tragedy seems to have been left in the past. What about that little girl, though, barely grown now, off to college alone and still on the outside? Still on the defensive? What happens to her? Will she find her own Happily Ever After with her cowboy prince?”
The final shot, then. The reporter’s voice, asking, “Do you hope to marry him?” And Dyma turning and saying, “No. I plan to use him for sex and then throw him away.”
Well, yeah. That was awkward.
Funny, though.
38
Catharsis
On Friday afternoon,Dyma pulled her backpack on as she followed the signs to baggage claim in New Orleans’s Louis Armstrong Airport and told Annabelle, “You know, for somebody who’d never been on a plane until I was seventeen, I’ve gotten used to it pretty fast. Although it’s still very cool. Mostly because we were in first class.” Trying to be cheerful. Trying to benormal.Trying to rise above the dread that kept clutching at her heart.
“It helps,” Annabelle agreed. “Well, I guess it does, because I’ve never flown, either, not unless Harlan was paying for the ticket or doing one of those private-jet things.”
“Plus,” Dyma said, “not as many people to recognize me.” She had to talk louder over the crowd and the speakers that were blasting out a jazzy version ofThe Little Drummer Boy,exactly one week before Christmas.She hadn’t known you couldmakea jazzy version ofThe Little Drummer Boy.
