Read Online Red Glove by Holly Black - Free Book Online Page A

out about me being from a family of workers, and that would be that. But you. There was a time when I could tell you anything—and then I thought I killed you, and now when I have you back, I can’t—You’re—She took—”
    Lila leans forward swiftly. Her lips are soft on my cheek.
    I close my eyes. Her breath is warm and it would only take the smallest shift of my mouth, just a slight acquiescence, for us to be kissing. Kissing Lila would wash away my grief and pain and guilt. It’s all I want in the world.
    “You’re going to get all the things you think you can’t have,” she says quietly, reaching out to rub red lipstick from my cheek. “You just don’t know it yet.”
    I sigh at the touch of her glove.
    After the eulogies are finished, Grandad steers me toward a black limousine. I slide in, next to my mother, who is already drinking from the minibar. Something brown, out of a heavy-bottomed glass. Barron slides in after me.
    We’re quiet, riding. I hear the clink of ice cubes, the exhalation of a single ragged breath. I close my eyes.
    “I don’t know what to do with all of Philip’s things,” Mom says suddenly. “Maura’s not coming to get them. We’ll have to put it all in his old room at the house.”
    Grandad groans. “I just cleaned that place out.”
    “You two better box everything up after the police are finished,” Mom says, ignoring Grandad, her voice threatening hysteria. “His son might want them someday.”
    “His son’s not going to want them,” Barron says wearily.
    “You don’t know that.” She goes to pour herself more booze from the bar, but the limo hits a bump and the liquor splashes her dress. She starts to cry, not the loud keening from before but quiet sobs that shake her whole body.
    I grab some napkins and try to blot the spill. She pushes my hand away.
    “You don’t know,” she says to Barron through her tears. “Look at Cassel. That’s his father’s suit.”
    “Yeah, and it’s a million years out of style,” says Barron.
    I shrug, playing along.
    Grandad grins. “It’s going to be all right, Shandra,” he says.
    Mom shakes her head.
    “Save the kid from looking like Cassel there,” says Barron. “Throw the stuff out. Besides, I got a line on a guy in Princeton looking to buy a painting. I need a roper. We’ll buy a dozen silk suits.”
    Mom sniffs and slugs back the rest of her drink.
    The burial takes place in the rain. Barron and I share an umbrella, which means that water constantly streams down the back of my neck. Barron puts his arm over my shoulders and I lean against him for a moment, like he really is my older brother who wants to protect me. The ceremony is subdued, since all the eulogies have been given. Even my mother’s tears appear to be wrung out.
    Or maybe even she can’t compete with the weather.
    After it’s over, Lila and her father get into the back of a car, and his bodyguards drive them away. She throws me a small wave as she gets in.
    The rest of us go to my grandfather’s house for the wake. The old women of Carney are out in force, and Grandad’s dining room table is groaning under the weight of casseroles, pies, and cold cuts trays.
    A middle-aged woman in a black tweed suit is whispering to her friend. The other woman laughs and says, “Oh, no, Pearl! I’ve been married three times, and I never let any of them see me without my gloves, no less take off theirs.”
    I head for the kitchen.
    Mom stops me on the way out of the room. Her eyes are outlined in the gray remainder of her makeup, making them look sunken. Haunted.
    “Baby,” she says.
    “Mom,” I say, trying to slide past. I want her away from me. I already feel too much. I can’t bear feeling anything more.
    “I know that you always looked up to Philip,” she says, as though the last six months never happened. As though the last three years never happened. The smell of liquor is strong on her breath. “But we’ve both got to be strong.”
    I say