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wanted.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Did you, Ree?”
    “Did I what?”
    “Get to do what you wanted?”
    “After I left home I sure did.”
    “When was that?”
    Black eyes shifted to the floor. “A long time ago.”
    “How long ago?”
    “I was young, I admit it.”
    I waited.
    She said, “Fifteen.”
    “You ran away.”
    “Nope, I just walked out the door and no one tried to stop me.” Sudden smile, Death Valley–dry. “They never even reported me missing.”
    “How’d that make you feel?”
    “Did it insult me?” she said. “Maybe if I cared it would’ve. I knew if they found me it would just be more of the same.”
    “Avoiding your father when he was drunk.”
    “That, too,” she said. “But I’m talking about how boring it was. Nothing ever happened. I got to wondering if that was what life was gonna be like if I stayed there.”
    “Out on your own, you had adventures.”
    She studied me. “I had experiences. You gonna hold that against me?”
    “Why would I?”
    “Alternative lifestyle, Doctor. That’s what her bitch lawyer called it. Like I’m some kind of freak. I just lived my life the way I wanted and didn’t hurt no one. So don’t judge me for any of that, okay? Please. Andhow about we talk about right now and not get into the past? ’Cause the past doesn’t exist anymore, right?”
    “I do need to ask about a few things that happened in the past.”
    “Like what?”
    “Have you and your sister ever had any financial connections?”
    “What kind of connections?”
    “Has she made substantial loans to you?”
    “Because she’s rich and I’m not?”
    “Because obligations can create issues.”
    “Well, they’re not issues for me. I’m happy with my life, if I wanted to be rich I’d go be rich. I figured it was better to bring joy and love into my life.
She
thought different and look where she is now.”
    “Alone.”
    “Alone and all dried up and mean as a wolverine. Not that it bothers her, Doc. She
really
doesn’t like people. That’s why she became a microscope doctor. So she can sit in her lab and not talk to patients. It was always like that with her. Study study study, no friends, no parties, no fun. You daren’t go into her room when the big genius had her nose in the books.”
    “So no financial entanglements between you.”
    She fidgeted. “I loaned from her a few times. Small stuff. But I always paid it back. Now look how she’s paying
me
back!”
    “What do you think motivated her to bring the suit?”
    “Hatred,” she said. “Pure and evil hatred. I was always the pretty one, I had friends. There was always that hatred.”
    “Why do you think she chose now to take you to court?”
    “Ask
her
.”
    “The suit was filed two months after you retrieved Rambla from her care. It takes time to hire a lawyer and start building a case, so it sounds like she started the process soon after.”
    “So?”
    “Maybe she started to think of herself as Rambla’s mom.”
    “
Fuck
her and fuck what she
thought
.”
    I said nothing.
    Cherie Sykes yanked her braid hard. “Sorry. It just makes me so … she’s hurting me, she’s really chewing me up inside. It’s like she’s trying to kill me.” Another pat of her breast. “Whatever—yeah, she probably was plotting all along but not because she cared about Rambla, Doc. All she thinks about is herself, she wanted to carve out my heart and watch me bleed but I went and took my heart back and she couldn’t stand it and she figured she could tell me what to do and I’d just do whatever because when we were kids it was sometimes like that.”
    “Connie called the shots.”
    “She sure as hell tried. And when I was little, I bought into it. Then I got smart.” She pushed her head forward. “To tell the truth, one of the reasons I left was to get away from her.”
    “From being dominated.”
    “Yeah, and now she figures she can use her money to … terrorize me. Her and that rich-bitch Beverly Hills