Chapter 3: One month earlier-Sarah

There was a beautiful blue butterfly on the porch railing. I wanted to capture it and put it in a glass jar, even though I shouldn't. Daddy always told me that rubbing the powder off a butterfly's wings made it impossible for them to fly. I didn't want to hurt the thing; I just wanted to look at it a little longer. And as soon as I walked up the porch, it would fly off, and I would never see it again.

The butterfly flew away, as predicted, and I had only made it up the first step.

With the slight distraction gone, I was free to focus on other things. I had a mission in mind now that Miranda was home. Through the screen door, I could hear her rustling around in the kitchen like a raccoon.

Honestly, there were some days where she wasn't so bad. They were just buried underneath all of the other days where everything she did annoyed me.

She had her face stuck behind the fridge door, and I waited-patiently-for her to pull her head out. I had no doubt she lingered on purpose just to irritate the snot out of me. When she finally straightened, she had a carton of orange juice in her hand. Randi pierced my stare and twisted off the cap. She lifted the jug to her mouth and wrapped her lips around the spout.

I hated that. It was disgusting and unsanitary, and I just knew she would backwash. Now, no one other than her could drink out of it again. As always, my sister didn't seem to care. She just burped and went back to drinking. Her thin throat convulsed with each swallowed mouthful. Then she burped again and set the juice on the counter.

Even though I couldn't see myself, I felt the twisted way my features mangled into an expression of disgust. "It's amazing you have any friends at all with manners like those." The words just jumped out of my mouth before I could sensor or soften them.

She shrugged and didn't respond. Randi would push every button I had right up until the point of detonation, but she never wanted to initiate a full-blown argument. I hated fighting with my little sister almost as much as I hated being the one to have to discipline her. But she was really good at careening us down a path toward a disagreement and then trying to deviate to save her own tail.

Randi popped back up and seemed disappointed that I hadn't gone away. She sighed again and set her elbows on the counter that stood between us. That counter had kept us from lunging at each other and prevented us from gouging each other's eyes out on more than one occasion, and today, it seemed to serve the same purpose-a barrier between the Adams sisters.

She squeezed her arms together in a sad attempt to make her breasts pop. They looked like biscuits exploding from the tube. I had no idea where she'd learned such crass behavior. Even before Mama had left, Randi had never been allowed to act like anything other than a young lady.

"I got a call from your coach this morning." I threw out the information I had and stood my ground, waiting to see what she did with it. I kept my jaw clenched and my chin high.

Miranda would take it as a challenge, a dare for her to retaliate or rebut. And when she stood straighter and squared her shoulders, I had no doubt that a screaming match was quickly becoming a very real possibility.

She muttered something about a violation of privacy, and I knew I had her. She was uncomfortable and squirming-she'd also lied.

"She said you didn't show up for camp yesterday, which is odd, since you left the house with your bag, and I specifically remember your telling me that was where you were going and why you wouldn't be home last night." The heat rose from my chest to my cheeks.

I was desperate to maintain my composure. I wasn't trying to lose my cool and let her gain a single inch of moral superiority. But here it was. Randi had noticed just how irritated I'd become.

"It's not a big deal, Sarah," she huffed. Randi waved me off in an attempt to dismiss her actions.

"It's a huge deal. You made a commitment to those girls." I couldn't stop my own hands from balling into fists. "Do you have any idea how bad it looks for the captain of the squad not to show up?"

She pressed her lips together. "Previous captain. And it's cheerleading, not the Nobel Prize." Randi lifted a shoulder with a shrug. "There are tons of other seniors there to help."

I hated how complacent she was about all of this, how it all rolled off her shoulders like water off a duck's back. It was entirely possible that I wanted her to be angry because I was angry. It built faster than a forest fire, and it was going to spread just as rapidly if she didn't start using language that made her seem like less of a self-serving prima donna.

"I'm going next week. Chill out." She started to move away.

Without even thinking about it, I reached out and snatched her arm. My anger boiled right in the center of my chest. I didn't want to do this. I wanted to have a reasonable conversation with my eighteen-year-old sister. But she refused to act reasonably. It was her MO. Randi took everything for granted-me, Daddy, everything we had worked for. She did nothing to pull her weight on the ranch, and she abhorred manual labor. Meanwhile, she trotted around, flashed her assets and stunning smile, and got away with murder.

Ever since Mama had left, Miranda Adams had refused to follow the rules and insisted on making her own.

I wasn't about to let it keep happening. It had to end sometime, and I chose today-now. If nothing else came out of this, she would give me a straight answer. One way or another, Randi would admit where she'd been. I refused to let her skip out on me this time.

"Where were you?" I demanded.

Even I noticed the chill that took over the hot Texas air. My voice softened in a frightening way the angrier I got, and it cast an icy haze over the conversation. I swore Miranda shivered.

She licked her lips, trying to buy time to formulate a lie. But the longer she searched for a way out, the less likely she was to find one. And when she dropped my gaze, I had her. "The lake," she said.

Bull.

I had to hold my breath and count to ten. If I didn't, I was liable to explode. "All night?"

"No." She was racking her brain as she spoke. My sister was a master at cutting up the truth to feed it to me in unrecognizable pieces. "There was a field party at Twin Creeks."

That explained it. I still wasn't happy about her sneaking around and offering me half-truths, but at least she had been in good hands.

"You were with Austin?"

Austin was a good kid who came from good people. The entire town was aware that the Burins were basically angels sent down to earth-Austin, Charlie...well, the whole lot of them.

"He was there. Along with two hundred of his closest friends." Her sarcasm wasn't winning her any brownie points. Miranda acted like she wanted a fight. The smug look on her face spoke of her resistance. She wasn't giving in easily.

I'd been so focused on keeping my breathing under control that I was on the verge of passing out. My head was starting to spin the way it frequently did where my sister was concerned.

"Was Charlie there?" I didn't want to ask and didn't know why I had; it wasn't like it mattered.

Charlie never remembered my name despite twelve years of school together and the fact that our families had Sunday lunch together more often than not. Charlie Burin wouldn't know me if I slapped him in the face.

"Yes." Miranda deflated a bit, but there was also a hint of pity in her eyes.

"You know he and Daddy are working on an irrigation project, right?"

"So?" She flashed back.

I was pressing too much, and I didn't like the look on her face. "Did he mention it?" There was a knowing gleam in her expression-she thought she was on to me. I didn't want to know what she thought I was trying to get out of this conversation. Heck, at this point, I didn't know what I was trying to get out of it.

"I didn't talk to him," she said.

I could feel myself losing steam. This conversation was going nowhere, and it was pointless. If she hadn't gone to the Burins' to talk about anything useful, then there was no point in her being there at all. That wasn't true-I knew exactly why she'd been there; it just wasn't something I would have done. It didn't matter that I wouldn't have done it because I was never invited and not because I wouldn't have wanted to be included.

I wasn't as naïve as Randi liked to believe. It wasn't a secret that my little sister judged me, but I often forgot just how deep it ran until she gave me certain looks or made catty comments. I might not have ever been popular or part of Mason Belle's social scene in high school, but I did have some worldly knowledge outside of my dusty Farmer's Almanac.

Miranda would never understand just how drastically my life had changed the day our mama left. Any chance I'd had at a normal childhood vanished just like the mother who'd abandoned us. I'd done my best, but I didn't want to be Randi's surrogate mother any more than she wanted me to be. The only thing I wanted from Randi was for her to do her part and act like she'd been raised with manners.

She would rather die, it seemed, than do something to contribute to the family in a positive way. Her association with the Burins was a blessing in a lot of ways, and I always prayed that Austin would be a calming influence on Randi's wild ways. Unfortunately, it seemed to lean the other direction. Rather than his good qualities rubbing off on her, she did her best to smear her worst traits all over him.

I hated that line of thinking. I was the last person who needed to give up on Randi, and I did my best to sweep my attitude under the proverbial rug...for now. Small-town gossip could ruin a girl like Randi and kill any hopes she might have of keeping a boy like Austin. Rumors could be brutal, even if they weren't true.

"Your reputation is already questionable." I had my own impulse control issues-they just weren't the same as my sister's. I couldn't help it; the words just sprang off my tongue. My own fury coiled tightly in my chest. "Pulling these kinds of stunts only cements what people in town think of you." I didn't want to hurt her, but I hated the way she looked at me like I was the pathetic one of the two of us.

She crossed her arms and narrowed her gaze. "No one in Mason Belle gives a flip what I do. And last time I checked, you weren't my mama."

Her words stung. Maybe it was the blatant, red-hot anger that colored them, but more than the anger, it was the contempt. It all hurt. And it had hurt since Mama had left, and I'd tried to fill in. Eight years of torture-not just for me, but Randi, too. Neither of us deserved the hand we'd been dealt.

This had gone beyond the scolding I'd intended and morphed into a full-blown fight, and I had no way of pulling it back. Words flew from my mouth in a way I didn't intend before I could stop them. "I'm the closest thing you've got, and I'm ashamed of who you're becoming. This is not how you were raised."

Her jaw shifted, and then she sucked on her teeth. I wondered for just a second if my sister was going to spit on me or hit me.

She did neither. "Are we done?" she snapped, having far more self-control than I wanted to give her credit for.

"Not quite."