Wide Open by Deborah Coates Page A

that, like a cult?”
    “You be careful what you ask,” he said. His voice softened when he said it, and for that one moment, she couldn’t tell if he was threatening or warning her.
    Hallie took another step back. People squeezed past her; it was crowded now, but Hallie held her ground. She wanted to see Pete’s face when she talked to him, not some random spot on his shirt halfway between his nose and his crotch.
    “You hear me?” he said.
    Maybe it would be smart to be subtle, for once.
    “What’s that thing on your belt buckle, Pete?”
    Maybe not.
    Pete’s hand slapped over the buckle, like he’d been caught in the open. His jaw worked for a moment; then he said, “You don’t live here anymore, Hallie. And you don’t know what you’re messing with.”
    “She was my sister, Pete.”
    “I mean it, Hallie.”
    “So do I.”
    They stared at each other for a minute, like a standoff. Hallie said, “I thought you loved her.”
    For a swift second, there was a look on his face, vulnerable and open. Then it was gone, and there was no mistaking the fury that replaced it. “You bitch,” he said.
    He grabbed at her again, but Hallie was too quick for him, out of range and walking away. She didn’t look back, though she felt an itch between her shoulder blades, like she had a target painted there.
    Lightning bolts. What the hell?
    She had just ordered a beer at the bar when a huge commotion, all whoops and hollers, started at the exact same moment someone dropped a hand on Hallie’s shoulder.
    “Jesus, Lorie,” Hallie said when she turned.
    Brett, who was just behind Lorie, stepped up and got a beer for herself and a Coke for Lorie, and they found a table away from the dance floor. Lorie kept up a running monologue, pointing out who’d been here the last time she’d come to the Bob, who’d been in their graduating class in high school, who hadn’t graduated from high school, who had a job, who hadn’t worked a single day since last July, and who was dating, stepping out on, leaving, or marrying who. At some point, she worked in an apology for brushing Hallie off earlier on the phone. “There were people around,” she said, then went right back to talk about who she saw at the post office three weeks ago.
    Hallie didn’t stop her, knew she did it like a wall between herself and the fact that this wasn’t a celebration—more like the way life was going to be from here on out. No more Dell. Ever. Because it was noticeable here, like a black hole, because they’d all been here with Dell at one time or another, because she’d loved it here.
    Lorie leaned forward. “Do you remember her?” she asked, pointing at a woman sitting three tables away from them with three other women her age. She wore a tea-stained straw hat with a hondo crown, tight blue jeans, and a sleeveless top. “Jennie Vagts?” Lorie continued. “She was, like, two years behind us in school. Went to college over in Brookings, but she’s taking a semester off. Or … that’s what she told Dell when she interviewed out at the company. I think she got in trouble or something, and her mother made her come home.
    “I saw her over at Cleary’s yesterday, because that’s where she’s working now. She had a good job—I mean a good job out at Uku-Weber, and she just up and quit last week.” Lorie snapped her fingers. “Like that. Who would do that?”
    Dell’s ghost settled in just behind Hallie. The icy cold of an arctic winter cut through Hallie’s shoulder blade like a knife. Brett tapped her index finger against her beer glass. Hallie could feel Pete watching her, like an itch she couldn’t scratch. She turned around, spotted him in the growing crowd, and stared back. Pete nodded to the man across the table from him, a heavyset man in his mid-twenties, who looked over at Hallie and laughed. Pete smirked, then turned back to his companions.
    You fucker, Hallie thought, I could take you. He was bigger than she was, probably