Page 15 of Darling Girls

As Norah slipped out, Alicia waved, but Jessica didn’t even notice. The irony of Jessica always worrying aboutherwas not lost on Norah.

In the driveway, Norah unlocked her car and got inside, taking a minute to bask in the silence and the comforting scent of old dog vomit that had dried into the seats. Today had involved far too much talking. Norah appreciated the great wonder of communication as much as the next person, but she despised it in excess. She particularly despised it when the topic had anything to do with her childhood.

She started the car and was preparing to drive off when her phone flashed with a new message.

My nose is broken. I’ve spent the entire night in the emergency room. You can’t just go around assaulting people, Nora.

The message was from someone called Kevin. Norah was about to reply that he had the wrong number when she remembered the man she’d put into a cab to the hospital a few hours earlier, blood dripping down the front of his shirt.

Shit.

She hadn’t told her sisters about him. She’d been distracted by the news of the discovery at Wild Meadows, but even if she hadn’t, she probably would have kept it to herself. After what the judge had said about Norah running out of chances, Jessica would just worry, and what was the point of that? Norah could take care of this herself.

She picked up the phone and thumbed in a reply.

Send me a list of your medical expenses and I’ll pay them. P.S. It’s Norah. With an ‘h’.

Three dots appeared immediately. A second later, another message.

It was a public hospital. It’s not about the money.

Jesus H. Christ. Now the man had principles?

She turned on the car light, lifted her top and snapped a photo of her breasts. Let’s see what his principles thought of that.

For your pain and suffering, she wrote.

She sent it. For a moment, there was no response. Then Norah saw dots.

That’s. . .not what I expected. Wow.

She could practically see his revolting smile. Norah thumbed another quick message.

Just don’t go to the cops, okay? I have a community corrections order. It’s like a suspended sentence.

Kevin:Lol. Seriously?

Norah:Seriously. You should count yourself lucky. The last guy didn’t come off as well as you.

Kevin sent back a laughing face, which was weird, but Norah figured she’d got her point across. She chalked up Kevin’s easy acceptance of the situation to the fact that she was extremely attractive, and men tended to make poor choices when it came to extremely attractive women. It was one of the few certainties in Norah’s life that she could rely on.

She dusted off her hands theatrically and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.There, she thought. She’d taken care of it. If there was one thing Norah had learned from growing up in foster care, she thought as she drove away, it was how to take care of things. Her methods were a little unorthodox, but they had to be. Back when she was a little girl, it was her unorthodox methods that had kept her and her sisters alive.

8

NORAH

BEFORE

‘You’re lucky to be coming to this home,’ Norah’s social worker, Scott, told her as they pulled up at Wild Meadows.

Norah looked up at the house doubtfully. ‘Why am I lucky?’

It was an important question, Norah had determined. She was ten years old, and it was her seventh foster placement. She’d been told she was lucky to go to the last place, where she’d shared a room with a teenage boy who liked to crawl into bed with her at night. (When she’d told her foster mother, the woman was unconcerned. ‘If he does it again, kick him in the balls,’ she said. Good advice, as it turned out.) She’d been told she was lucky to go to the place with the cat who bit her so deeply she’d needed eight stitches. She’d been told she was lucky when she was sent to the place that made the kids eat hot sauce if they asked for more food.

This time, she wanted to understand why she was lucky.

Scott pulled up the handbrake. ‘Because you have somewhere to live.’