Page 38 of Worse Than Wicked
I remember her asking if she made it all up, and I start to wonder if she did. Dahlia existed, but there’s no evidence they were friends. Mabel said we made her think she was crazy and that she’d made it all up, but we never did that. Her parents did. I have no love for any Darling except the one in front of me, but her parents aren’t that sort of cruel. If they made her think Dahlia was an imaginary friend, then in all likelihood, she was.
Or maybe Mabel’s playing an angle even now, though I’m not sure what she hopes to gain from it. The fact that I don’t know irritates me, but I won’t give her the satisfaction of knowing that. There’s only one reason she’d want me to think Dahlia was imaginary, and that’s to protect her. But that doesn’t make sense, since she’s already asked me to look into her. I decide to watch Mabel even more closely. She was born sneaky, and she hasn’t changed.
“I don’t get it, but okay,” I say, shrugging like I don’t care about her childhood memories.
She peels up a circle of lichen with her thumbnail. “You had your brothers to play with. You like them. I didn’t like my family, especially when we were staying here. That meant I was with my grandpa.”
I nod, finally making some sense of the picture she painted.
“Did you get in trouble?” I ask.
“Sometimes,” she says, straightening her legs on the floor and staring at her knees. “If I stayed out too long and they realized I was gone. Dahlia would lose track of time, but I never did. I just didn’t want to go home.”
We sit in silence for a while, each of us dwelling in our own thoughts. Then we climb down and go back to the house she avoided so much that she’d risk getting punished by her grandfather for it.
After our walk and a shower, we drive over to the Dolce house. Devlin and Crystal live there now, right next door to the new house his parents built on the foundation of the one Duke burned down. Our house—Hickory House, according to Mabel—is big enough that Royal and Harper can move in for the summer. We could have moved back in too, but since Summer House stands empty, it made more sense for us to stay there. Royal still hasn’t completely forgiven me, and I thought it would be better not to be under the same roof as Harper.
We find Duke sitting on the living room floor surrounded by a handful of kids. Crystal is lying on the couch with a towel over her eyes, one hand on her distended belly.
“What’s with her?” I ask Duke, nodding to our sister.
“Migraine,” he says. “Who knew teen pregnancy could be so hard?”
Crystal holds up one hand, middle finger raised. “I’m not a teenager anymore, asshole.”
“What your mouth, woman,” he says. “This asshole is watching your hoard of children.”
“Thank you,” she says, putting her hand back on her belly.
“Maybe if you spent more time with the kids you already have and less time making more, you wouldn’t be in this situation,” he says, but he smiles at Knight, who’s frowning at the brightly colored contraption they’re assembling.
Olive is coloring at the coffee table with Diamond, who’s just scribbling on her page, while Prince is hiding underneath, munching on a crayon.
“Who’s that?” I ask, pointing to a fat, generic-looking baby sitting in a swing. “Did you have another one that I missed?”
“Nah, that’s Preston’s spawn,” Duke says. “Good thing it came out with two eyes, right?”
He winks at Olive, who grins and goes back to coloring an intricate koala bear page.
“That’s not hereditary,” Mabel points out. “Baron took out his eye.”
“I’m joking, babe,” Duke says, snapping the next piece into place.
“Really?” Olive asks me with childish, demented delight. “You scooped out Preston’s eyeball?”
“No,” I say, frowning at her. “I burned it out.”
“Cool,” she whispers, gazing up at me with obvious awe. I bet she’d think all the things I did to her sister were cool too, if she didn’t let emotions cloud her judgment.
“We’re going to visit my stepmom,” Mabel says to Duke. “Do you want to come with us?”
“Will Colt be there?” he asks. “Or is he in rehab again?”
“He’s not in rehab,” Mabel says. “I’m not sure if he’ll be in or not.”
He laughs quietly and mutters under his breath, “What a pussy.”
“We’re not going to talk to Colt,” I point out. “She wants to talk to her parents. Why do you always bring him up?”
