The look on her cousin’s face–one that opened possibilities–sent an itch of nervousness over Daphne’s skin.
Daphne asked, “Are you guys, um, serious partiers?”
“You mean drinking and smoking?” Tana’s tinkling laughter did nothing to relieve Daphne’s tension. “You don’t seem like you’d mind if we are.”
The bell above the door to the shop rang, reminding Daphne that they were still in a public place.
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Did Jordan ever tell you why my mom sent me away?”
Tana stopped spinning.
“I can guess. But does it matter?” Tana said, her voice light and lacking judgment, “You’re a Shanahan.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate it,” Daphne said as she tugged at the crusty flakes of her sandwich bread, “but how is it you’re so laid-back about our family?”
For not the first time, Daphne rolled the idea of her other side and her family’s history of violence together into a neat ball in her mind. She tossed that ball to her darker self to toy with. Some day she would need to decide if she was regular, treatable crazy or a brand new type that should be shot on sight.
Beside her, Tana said, “Everyone has stuff they’re not super proud of. Even I have my ‘moments’, as Jordy calls them.”
Daphne’s chest tightened. She felt her face grow hot as she tried to ignore the desire to over-analyze her cousin’s words, to find that they were the same.
Tana continued. “You have to be able to screw up sometimes. These things happen and then life goes on.”
Daphne gave a terse laugh. “You said you remember that we met at my dad’s funeral. That was, like, the opposite of his life going on. Plus, your mom’s in jail. Her life can’t be continuing.”
There was a brief flicker of passion behind Tana’s hazel eyes. Daphne tried to read her cousin’s body language, but the younger girl smothered the emotion.
She seemed well practiced at that trick.
Tana smiled then, soft and sweet, no trace of whatever had coursed through her the moment before. She said, “When Ma gets out, everything will be normal. Right now, she’s safe. So, why worry?”
Daphne shook her head. “I seriously doubt that a wall between her and the real world is keeping Aunt Lorraine safe. If anything, being trapped with her personal demons sounds far more threatening. What happens,” Daphne asked, “if she has to go back?”