After the Night Read Online Free

his "go outside" noise again. "I can’t take you outside," Faith explained, endlessly patient though he didn’t understand much. "I have to cook supper. Would you rather have fried potatoes or mashed ones?" It was a rhetorical question, because mashed potatoes were much easier for him to eat. She smoothed his dark hair and returned once again to the table and the bowl of potatoes.
    Lately, Scottie wasn’t as energetic as usual, and more and more his lips took on a blue tinge when he played. His heart was failing, just like the doctors had said would likely happen. There wouldn’t be a miracle heart transplant for Scottie, even had the Devlins been able to afford it. The few available children’s hearts were too precious to be wasted on a little boy who would never be able to dress himself, or read, or manage more than a few garbled words no matter how long he lived. "Severely retarded" was how he was categorized. Though a hard little lump formed in Faith’s chest at the thought of Scottie dying, she wasn’t bitter that nothing would be done about his failing health. A new heart wouldn’t help Scottie, not in any way that mattered. The doctors hadn’t expected him to live this long, and she would just take care of him for whatever time he had left.
    For a while, she had wondered if he was Guy Rouillard’s son, and felt furious on his behalf that he wasn’t taken to live in the big white house, where he would have the best of care, and his few years would be happy. Because Scottie was retarded, she thought, Guy was happy to keep him out of sight.
    The truth was, Scottie could just as easily be Pa’s son, and it was impossible to tell. Scottie didn’t look like either man; he simply looked like himself. He was six years old now, a placid little boy who was pleased by the smallest things, and whose security was rooted in his fourteen-year-old sister. Faith had taken care of him from the day Renee had brought him home from the hospital, protected him from Pa’s drunken rages, kept Russ and Nicky from teasing him unmercifully. Renee and Jodie mostly ignored him, which was okay with Scottie.
    Jodie had asked Faith to "double date" with her that night, and shrugged when Faith refused because someone had to stay home and take care of Scottie. She wouldn’t have gone out with Jodie anyway; their ideas of fun were radically different. Jodie thought having fun was sneaking some illegal booze, since she was only sixteen, getting drunk, and having sex with the boy or group of boys who were hanging around her that night.
    Everything in Faith shuddered in revulsion at the thought. She had seen Jodie come in, stinking of beer and sex, her clothes torn and stained, giggling at how much "fun" she had had. It never seemed to bother her that those same boys wouldn’t speak to her if they met her in public.
    It bothered Faith. Her soul burned with humiliation at the contempt in people’s eyes whenever they looked at her, at anyone in her family. The trashy Devlins, that’s what they were called. Drunks and whores, the whole bunch.
    But I’m not like that! The silent cry sometimes welled up in Faith, but she always held it in. Why couldn’t folks see beneath the name? She didn’t paint herself up and wear too short, too tight clothes like Renee and Jodie. She didn’t drink, didn’t hang around rough joints trying to pick up anything in pants. Her clothes were cheap and ill made, but she kept them clean. She never missed a day of school, if she could help it, and she had good grades. She hungered for respectability, wanted to be able to walk into a store and not have the clerks watch her like a hawk, because she was one of those trashy Devlins and everyone knew they’d steal you blind. She didn’t want people to make comments behind their hands whenever they saw her.
    It didn’t help that she resembled Renee far more than did Jodie. Faith had the same thick, dark red hair, as vibrant as a flame, the same porcelain-grained