by Jana DeLeon
Avery sniffed. “If it’s okay, I think I’ll go take a nap. I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Of course,” Marina said. “And when you get up, we’ll fix some dinner.”
Avery nodded and rose from the couch, then headed silently upstairs.
“You think she’s okay?” Marina asked.
“As okay as she can get for now. But try not to worry. She’s strong. Probably stronger than either of us at that age.”
“I’m pretty sure she’s stronger than me right now.”
Halcyon slid over and gave Marina a hug. “Honey, you are the best person I know. And spending all those years taking care of your husband and Avery and your home doesn’t make you weak. It makes you the caring, loving person you are. Just think about the things that have been hurled at you the last couple days. If I’d told you last week that you could handle all of that, you’d have said I was crazy. You’ve always been strong. You just had to believe it.”
Marina sniffed. “Would I ruin your opinion of me if I told you I desperately need a glass of wine?”
“I would have worried more if you didn’t.”
Chapter Nineteen
The next morning, Marina gave Avery a hug before she climbed into her car. Dinner the night before had been a pleasant affair. They’d all agreed that no talk of anything to do with Harold or the arrest was allowed, and Avery had spent most of the night telling them about her dorm room and the other students she’d met. It was obvious to Marina that Avery was making a concerted effort to appear upbeat, but she also knew her daughter had enjoyed the simplicity and comfort of eating pizza on the living room floor while MTV played in the background.
“Are you sure you’re going to be all right in the cabin?” Avery asked.
“I’m positive,” Marina said.
“I still don’t understand why you won’t live with Aunt Halcyon. You know she’d be happy for you to.”
“There’s Snooze to consider. Your aunt is allergic to him and he’s allergic to your father.”
“Aunt Halcyon could take a pill or something.”
“I know. But more importantly, I need to be alone. There’s a lot of things I have to work out, and it’s hard to do the kind of thinking I need to do with someone trying to help me every second. If I was living with your aunt, she wouldn’t be able to keep herself from trying to fix everything for me.”
Avery gave her a pointed look.
Marina smiled. “So if I’m smothering you at eighteen, how do you think I feel at forty-eight? This is something I need to do for myself by myself. It’s time I decided how I want things to be instead of just accepting the way they are.”
Avery nodded. “I get it. Just promise me that you’ll be careful, and if there’s ever a serial killer loose or some other horror movie thing going on, you’ll move in with Aunt Halcyon.”
“I promise not to be serial killed.”
“Aunt Halcyon said you already went running into the woods half naked.”
“I prefer half dressed.”
Avery laughed. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too.”
Avery backed out of the driveway and Marina stood there watching until the car went around the corner and out of sight. Then she shuffled back inside and poured a cup of coffee. Halcyon trudged into the kitchen a couple minutes later.
“Is Avery gone already?” she asked as she peered out the window.
“Yeah. She wanted to get back to campus for some event today. I’m not sure that was the truth, but I don’t blame her for wanting to get out of Last Chance. With the way things have gone down, she probably won’t be back unless she’s compelled to return by the court.”
Halcyon gave Marina’s shoulder a squeeze and headed for the coffeepot. “Give her some time. She’s had a lot to process in only a few days. And she’s young.”
“I’m old and I need time to process everything. I can’t even imagine how hard this is for Avery. It’s one thing to be betrayed by your husband. It’s completely another to be betrayed by your father.”
“She’ll figure out how to tuck it away until she’s ready to deal with it. She has college and her new friends to fill her time.”
Marina blew out a breath. Now that the crisis with Avery was handled, at least for the moment, she could no longer ignore the even bigger crisis looming.
“I have to find that ring,” Marina said. “Or none of this is going to matter. All of this angst and sacrificing will have been for nothing. I have to tell you, if the world ends after I kept myself from punching Harold dead in the face, I’m going to be super pissed.”
“Me too. My list is a little longer, but Harold’s right up there on top. So what do you want to do? We could try some pawnshops across the bayou, I suppose.”
“I was thinking about talking to Dottie Prejean first. She’s bound to have some older items and even if she doesn’t have the ring, she might know someone I can ask.”
“And what’s our angle? Because you can hardly waltz into the home of the First Lady of Last Chance and tell her you’re on a magical quest for power.”
“Yeah, that’s where I get stuck on things. We can’t go with the elderly cousin thing because Dottie knows all our relatives. You’re the creative one. Can you come up with a backstory and sell it?”
Halcyon, who’d had a talent for painting, singing, and acting, had attended art school in New Orleans after high school. Marina had always hoped her sister would find a way to pursue some sort of career in the arts, but she’d never made a move in that direction. She ran the local theater group, but that was strictly volunteer. Last Chance didn’t have the budget to pay someone and the work was only seasonal, when they were either preparing for or doing a production.
“A friend of mine maybe?” Halcyon suggested. “Looking for a family heirloom for her grandmother?”
“That could work. Can we make the grandmother ill?”
“We can put her on her deathbed if you think it would help. I have no qualms about killing off a made-up person. I just won’t play that game with real people.”
“Superstitious?”
“Bet your ass I am. This is Louisiana. You don’t go around wishing people dead here unless you mean it.”
“You do it all the time.”
Halcyon gave her a pointed look.
“Okay, then we’ll go with your friend’s half-dead grandma, but be prepared to improv in case Dottie asks.”
“Improv is how I live.”
“True. Now, for the next problem—even if we locate the ring with Dottie or with someone else, I still have to acquire it. I’m not going to steal it, which means I need cash. And since two-thirds of my bank account balance just went to our illustrious judicial system, I might be running short on funds for a ruby of that size.”
“I’ve got some investments,” Halcyon said. “But it would take at least a week to get them converted. I’ve got maybe a thousand in my checking until I get my next round of alimony checks.”
“I’m not going to take your money.”
“Why the hell not? I can’t use it if I’m dead. Besides, you can pay me back with that super support custom bra, remember?”
“But will it be enough?” Marina asked. “I figure a ruby that big is going to cost serious money and then if it’s someone’s heirloom, we’ll probably have to offer even more than market to get them to part with it. And as much as I hate to think about it, I’ve got five thousand in my checking account and zero job. If I don’t find the ring and the world doesn’t end, things aren’t looking good for me.”
“You need cash and you need it fast. I have an awesome idea.”
“What?”
“You sell beauty cream for an incredibly ridiculous price.”
“And just how would I manage that? I can’t whip up some awesome beauty cream that actually works and get it packaged and up for sale in a matter of days. And wouldn’t the FDA or some other government pay-us-kickbacks sort of entity have a
problem with that?”
“You don’t have to go through production and the FDA is not lurking in the bushes in Last Chance. What we do is get the cheapest crap we can find at the drugstore and you stick a little in a tiny plastic container. Then you schedule one-on-one appointments with people, claiming you make the formula specifically for them. When you apply the cheap lotion, you swipe your fingers across their wrinkles and voila!”
Marina stared. Why hadn’t she thought of that? If she could reverse wrinkles with no surgery, she could be rich as Caesar. The million dollars wouldn’t matter at all. Why hadn’t any of the Seekers before her figured that out?
Then she took a closer look at Halcyon. The skin under her eyes, which had been smooth and evenly pigmented the day before, was slightly elevated and the color a tiny bit darker than her cheeks. The laugh lines that Marina had erased were back. Much smaller, but back.
“What’s wrong?” Halcyon asked.
“It’s going away. Your skin is returning to normal.”
Halcyon jumped off the stool and ran to a mirror hanging in the living room.
“Shit!” she yelled. “What happened?”
Halcyon clutched her cheeks and got inches from her face, scanning it. “Yours is still perfect,” she said. “What gives?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like I got an instruction manual. Maybe the effect doesn’t last on other people because it’s not in you. That, and I touch my own face every day.”
Halcyon flopped onto the stool. “Well, that just sucks. And totally honks my super special beauty cream idea.”
“I suppose I could still do something like it, but it would have to be only done by me, none to take home, and would only last for a special occasion. Do you think anyone would be interested in that?”
“Probably, but not at ten grand a pop, which is what I was figuring you could charge for permanent changes.”
“Wow. That’s a lot.”
“It’s still cheaper than Botox for forty years. And a lot more comfortable.” Halcyon sighed. “But I guess the dream is over before it even began. And the average household income in Last Chance doesn’t support a healthy income stream for a temporary situation. If you were in New Orleans…”
“It might work there,” Marina agreed. “But I can’t exactly move, open a business, and get customers in the time frame we’re working with.”
Halcyon shook her head, rubbing her finger under her eyes. “And either you have to lay hands on me every day or I have to suffer like the rest of society.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I told my boobs to stay upright night before last and they haven’t shifted so much as a millimeter.”
“Then I guess we best find this ring so you can collect your retirement.”
“More like my current than my retirement. If the world doesn’t end, this thing with Avery could end up costing a fortune. Before and after the trial.”
“I’m pretty sure a hit man would be cheaper than a trial.”
“Not if my list keeps growing.”
“God, isn’t that the truth. Okay, what about this—we put together what money we can, but if we find the ring and know we won’t be able to swing the cost or, God forbid, it belongs to someone like the LeDoux, we steal it.”
“But what if it’s someone nice and we’re taking a very valuable item from them?”
“Then you’ll pay them back after you collect the million. Unless it’s the LeDoux. Leave a bag of money on their doorstep if it makes you feel better. But the reality is if we’re going to buy into this tale then we have to buy into the ending. Taking the ring in exchange for a future payout is better than the alternative where we’re all dead or worse—slaves to some invading douchebags.”
“I’ve already done the servant thing. I’m sorta over it.”
Chapter Twenty
Snooze gave Marina a woeful look when she walked into the cabin.
“Don’t give me that crap,” she said. “I let you out last night and I brought you pizza. I had a situation with Avery that had to be taken care of. You do like Avery, right?”
Single bark.
“Okay, then we’re in agreement. It’s not like you needed me here to listen to you snore anyway. Besides, I have kolache.”
His ears perked up and he did a regal sit.
She laughed. “You know, I kinda like this whole communication thing we have going. I wonder if I could teach you to type so we could have a real conversation. You might be the best guy I know.”
Single bark.
Marina took a kolache out of the bag and tossed it to Snooze, who caught it neatly then trotted off to the living room. She popped one in the microwave for herself, then headed into the bedroom to rummage some matching clothes out of the boxes she still hadn’t unpacked. She’d just started digging through the first box when Snooze started barking.
His angry bark.
She hurried into the living room and saw the old hound standing in front of the back door, almost frozen in place. And he did not look happy.
“Good God, are those hackles? You never get hackles. What’s out there?”
She grabbed the shotgun off the rack next to the back door and peered outside. Maybe it was a bear or a gator. Snooze wasn’t all that active, but his nose and his ears worked as well as any other bloodhound. And something had set him off.
“You stay here,” she said and opened the door to slip outside.
She walked from one end of the porch to the other, scanning the weeds, the tree line, and the bayou for what might have upset Snooze, but she didn’t see anything. She was just about to chalk the whole thing up to Snooze hearing a butterfly flapping somewhere in the woods when she saw something move in the trees. She lifted the shotgun and pointed it toward the area of movement. She’d only seen a shadow but whatever it was, it was tall. At least six feet.
A bear on his hind legs, maybe?
But then it took off and the bear theory flew out the window. It took off fast—on two legs. A bear couldn’t maintain that kind of speed unless on all fours.
The poacher, maybe? But why would he be lurking around her cabin during the day? He hadn’t been squatting here. They would have found evidence of someone living here, and the layers of dust had been a clear indication that no one had set foot inside in a long time. So why all the interest in the cabin now?
She blew out a breath and headed back inside. Snooze was still standing guard at the back door and she reached over to scratch his ears. “At least you’ll let me know if someone is out there. Between you and the guns Halcyon lent me, we’ve got this covered, right?”
But all the same, she made a mental note to call Luke when she got a chance. It might be nothing, but if the poacher was still on the loose, it could be that he was camped somewhere nearby. Maybe he was hoping for an opportunity to steal food or supplies.
“Okay, back to the clothes hunt,” she announced.
Snooze, apparently deciding the crisis was over, headed for the rug and flopped down. A couple seconds later, he was snoring.
Marina returned to the bedroom and tackled the boxes again, managing to locate a pair of jeans without holes in them and a blouse that wasn’t horribly wrinkled. She’d have to go with ballet flats because the lack of pedicure precluded sandals, but that would work.
She and Halcyon had decided that the first order of ring business would be paying Dottie a visit. Maybe they’d get lucky and she’d have the ring, and all of this could be over. At worst, Dottie would probably know other people to check with. Since other people likely meant older people, that meant wearing decent clothes and being on their best behavior.
After that, Halcyon wanted to go to a jewelry store near New Orleans and see what they’d give her for her engagement rings. Marina had protested until she was blue in the face, but Halcyon had insisted that it was way past time she got rid of them and it might solve the cash-flow problem. Worst case, they didn’t find the ring and on the night before the world was set t
o end, they’d blow it all on one final hurrah in New Orleans. But before she could do any of that, Marina had to take care of an obligation that she’d been putting off.
Visiting her mother.
She’d told herself that she was busy getting Avery to college and then with her and Avery’s exploding lives. The truth was, Marina was grateful to have a reason to put it off but would have settled for reasons with fewer long-term repercussions. She supposed she could still convince herself she had good reason to stay away, but it had been two weeks. And Marina liked to pop in regularly to make sure nothing was going on that she needed to know about—like a facility coup staged to get rid of her mother.
The thought of having Letitia out among society again was frightening for so many reasons, not the least of which being that Marina was living in the only structure her mother owned. So after getting dressed, she grabbed her keys and headed for the highway. The sooner she got it over with, the sooner she could get on with saving the world.
How many people could say that?
Thirty minutes later, Marina walked into the assisted living facility and signed in at the front desk. The nurse’s aide who usually worked at the front opened the locked door to allow her inside. She forced a smile and entered. It might have been two weeks since she’d last visited her mother but emotionally, it still felt like yesterday. Which made her feel guilty and sad and angry. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You weren’t supposed to dread seeing your mother, and as long as she had a breath left in her, Marina was going to make damned sure Avery never felt that way about her.
The professionals always tried to tell Marina not to take the things her mother said to heart. That Letitia wasn’t quite right and she didn’t mean the things she said. But Marina knew better. When doctors saw Letitia, she played the role of the feeble-minded old lady. The kindly, knitting grandma with white hair and a penchant for daytime talk shows. But Marina saw the shift in her expression when the doctors looked away. The narrowing of her eyes as she tried to figure out what angle to work. How to better her position.