I was sure Teo hadn’t been alone for all the years we’d been apart. Neither had I, but apparently neither of us had been completely free, either. “It’s like a piece of our past. A lot of time’s gone by since then.”
“And here we are, thrown up on the same shore together. You, me and Bismarck. And to top it all off, one of us may be involved in something she shouldn’t be. Ah, the memories.”
Road signs appear in our lives. We’re walking along, minding our business, and suddenly a sign appears. Sometimes they simply point out the best direction to turn, something we might have known all along. And sometimes they point us in new and scarier directions. I was looking at one of those right now. I could lie or at least cover up the truth. Or I could tell Teo what was going on.
I looked toward the sign that read Goodbye Forever, and I knew that this time, I wasn’t going to make that turn.
“I don’t know if I’m involved in something I shouldn’t be.” Even I could tell I was spacing my words carefully, in case I changed my mind between one and the next. “But Teo, I am involved in something.”
He didn’t look surprised. “I know.”
“But do you know what?”
“No clue. Except your sister seems to be somewhere else and suddenly here you are.”
I filled the teakettle and set it on the stove. Then I took down the canister of tea bags. “How connected are you to the sheriff’s office these days?” I leaned against the counter while the water heated. “I have to know before I tell you what’s going on.”
“I saw a picnic area over by the swimming pool. It’s a pretty day. Want to eat outside?”
I made the tea and rummaged for travel mugs so I could take it with us. I added snack packs of chips and some of the vegan chocolate chip cookies I’d frozen. It might be December, but outside, they’d defrost quickly.
We chatted but said nothing of note until we were sitting among a grove of crape myrtle trees at a round table to one side of Tropicana’s pool. The food was spread in front of us, and Teo and I were sitting close together on the shadiest side. No one else was around.
The sandwich was exactly the way I remembered it. I took several bites before I spoke. “This is heavenly.”
“So...”
I waited and watched him.
He gave a nod. “I think what you really wanted to know back there was whether I’m required to tell the sheriff or any of his deputies if I’m suspicious about something, or if I hear something that might be suspicious.”
“That covers it.”
“No, I’m not. But does that mean I won’t?”
“I need a promise that if I tell you, you’ll keep this to yourself.”
“If it puts somebody else in danger, I won’t keep it to myself.”
“It’s more likely that not keeping this to yourself might put someone in danger.”
“It’s interesting, isn’t it, that we’re picking up right where we left off. Quayle was about trust. This is about trust.”
I’d known he would get to that. “I’ll trust you if you tell me I should. And I should have trusted you then. I know it, you know it.”
“And I shouldn’t have come on like gangbusters.”
Tears rose in my eyes at that admission. “We have a second chance.” I paused and blinked hard. “At trusting, I mean.”
He smiled for a split second. “Yeah, I knew what you meant. So trust me and tell me what’s up.”
“Just so you know, this is Bismarck’s fault. I owe you an explanation because you loaned me your dog, and you don’t know the whole story.”
“You can stop making excuses. I’m listening.”
I’d had a few minutes to figure out how to tell Teo why I was suddenly taking care of my nieces. In the end, though, I just told him the story, beginning with the phone call in Delray and ending with the one yesterday.
He didn’t interrupt, but he made it clear he was carefully absorbing every word. When I finished, he nodded. “So everything you’re telling me is based on what Wendy’s said and what you’ve been able to find out on your own.”
“With the help of my coproducer, Sophie.”
“Okay. This is harder. Do you believe Wendy?”
As a tween I’d religiously watched Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It was something my father and I had done together if he happened to be home. Fast-forward to today and Teo’s million-dollar question.
“She’s my sister.” It was my best answer, but I wasn’t going to win prize money, and I sure couldn’t phone Dad for a better one.
“Do you think the break-in here had anything to do with Wendy?”
“I didn’t think so at first. But I didn’t know everything I know now, either. I didn’t know Milton Kerns had Wendy’s cell phone number, at least the phone she had the night of the murder. And with that, it wouldn’t be a stretch to obtain her address.”
“So what would he want that’s in the town house?”
“Teo, I’m completely clueless. But if he is after something, it’s pretty clear he has some connection to my sister that she hasn’t told me about.”
He looked surprisingly sympathetic. “Is that the first time you’ve admitted that your sister might not be telling the whole truth?”
I gave a vague nod, although Sophie had already read between the lines.
“So, do you want my opinion?” he asked.
“I don’t know, do I?”
“Probably not, but I’ll give it to you anyway. You need to go to the sheriff here, tell him what you told me, and ask him to contact the sheriff in New Mexico and set up an interview.”
I debated for less than a second. “Can’t do it.”
“I figured.”
“You have siblings. Would you turn them in?”
“You mean would I turn them in if I worried they were guilty of something, no matter what cock-and-bull story they told me?”
My lips parted to correct him, but I clamped them together. Because, of course, he was right.
“The last time you ignored my advice, you were almost killed and so was I, not to mention the dog at our feet.”
“And the last time you treated me like an idiot, I reacted badly, but you gave me little choice because you weren’t listening.”
We were both silent a moment as the words settled. Finally he spoke. “We aren’t good for each other.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I keep trying to. I managed for almost four years.”
“Yeah, me, too.” I leaned closer. “Do you have any advice I might actually be able to follow?”
He didn’t rise and leave me sitting there. He didn’t argue. I had expected one or the other. Instead he sighed. Then he leaned forward, too, and he kissed me. A brush of his lips, lasting only a second or two, but as momentous as any in my life.
“Maybe we should just be good to each other, and see what happens,” he said.
My brain was frozen, but my body was a river of fire. I cleared my throat. “That will be much easier.” I tunneled my fingers through his hair and brought his face closer for a second kiss.
He finally sat back. “Now that we’re even, finish your sandwich. I have to leave in a few minutes.”
I’m not sure what we talked about while we finished our lunch. I probably babbled. I had hoped we might find a way to be comfortable with each other again, a way to stop blaming each other, a way to stop feeling guilty. I hadn’t dared to hope that after everything and all the time that had passed, we might still find our way back to love.
We cleaned up in silence and headed back to my unit. We were careful not to touch. He didn’t hold my hand. But I felt the new intimacy like a warm cloak.
As he bent over to say goodbye to Bismarck, I put my hand on his arm. I’d just thought of something I needed help with, and it was another way to sh
ow that I trusted him.
He straightened. “I’m busy tomorrow,” he said, “but would you like to run by my place on Thursday? This time with me?”
“I’d love it.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me how I run with a prosthesis?”
“Okay. How do you run with a prosthesis? Faster than me or a whole lot faster?”
He grinned. “What were you going to say?”
“Can you break into a medicine cabinet for me?”
“Unexpected question. Why?”
I debated, but again, I told the truth. “The girls’ teachers are complaining about how tired they are at school. And Holly said her mother gave them allergy medicine before bed. Anyway, I want to be sure there are no prescriptions in the cabinet that they ought to be taking. And it’s locked.”
“You haven’t asked your sister?”
“Our conversations are about her problems, not about her daughters.”
“Do the girls miss her? They must.”
I hedged. “Noelle does. Holly’s more a daddy’s girl.”
“And speaking of Daddy?”
“Out at sea, God knows where, in his submarine keeping the world safe from nuclear weapons with nuclear weapons. But I do know how to text him. I just don’t think I want to do anything until I know more.”
“Are you worried that whatever’s in the cabinet could be the reason for the break-in?”
“I wasn’t until you just brought it up.”
“Let’s take a look.”
We climbed the stairs with Bismarck zigzagging behind like a border collie making sure we headed where we were supposed to. In the master bathroom Teo looked at the cabinet, arms folded in front of him. “This isn’t the original.”
“I know it doesn’t match.”
“Did your sister install it?”
“No telling.”
“Got nail clippers?”
There were several different sizes in the drawer beside the sink. I pulled out two and put them on the counter. Teo chose one and flipped out the nail file attachment. Then he inserted it into the cabinet lock.
He fiddled with turning the file until he seemed satisfied. Then he jiggled it slowly and gently, and finally he turned it once more. The cabinet door swung open.
He put the clippers back on the counter. “There you go.”
I whistled. “I am so impressed.”
“That’s all it took? I wish I’d known.”
He moved back so I could examine the contents. Teo watched as I pulled out prescription bottles, one after another, reading the labels silently, and finally followed with an economy-size bottle of a generic antihistamine. I stared at the collection on the sink, and I didn’t know what to say.
“Do you know what you’re looking at?” Teo’s tone said that he did.
I knew. I might have to look up some of the prescriptions online, but I was almost certain I was staring at enough tranquilizers and sleeping pills to knock out all of Seabank for a night.
Teo picked up several of the containers. Then he laid a hand on my shoulder. “She has a drug problem.”
I didn’t deny the evidence, but another answer occurred to me, and it was worse. The containers sitting on the bathroom counter were a possible clue why my nieces had been so fatigued at school, why Holly had too often fallen asleep at her desk, and why going to sleep was so difficult.
My sister might well be drugging her daughters.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
We Graceys aren’t a drop-in kind of family. In the years I’ve lived in Delray Beach, I’ve never driven to Seabank just to surprise my parents. And whenever I visited Wendy in Connecticut, we made elaborate arrangements, consulting a multitude of calendars before selecting a date.
This pattern has history. After my mother moved my eighty-five-year-old grandmother to a retirement community in Seabank, she and Nana still made appointments to see each other, arranged between Nana’s bridge games and Mom’s yoga or Pilates. While I’ve never asked if they arranged my grandmother’s death to suit their schedules, I’ve always wondered.
All this is to say that late Wednesday morning, when I realized my mother was standing unannounced at the town house front door, I wondered if the sky had fallen. Where was Chicken Little when I needed him most?
“Are you busy?” she asked before taking a step inside.
I had been. I’d finally taken a morning to do some much-needed work, but I wasn’t going to waste such an unusual opportunity.
“Never too busy to see you.” I gave her an awkward hug.
Arlie Gracey can take in everything around her in one sweeping glance. Today she swept before she spoke. “The place looks good.”
I was ridiculously pleased. “The girls help me pick up before bedtime.”
“How do you manage that?”
“With a whip and chains.”
She smiled stiffly. “They weren’t what I’d call cooperative when they were with us.”
“I’m reading them the Paddington books. The sooner we finish cleanup, the more time I have to read.”
“You’ll be a good mother.”
“Yeah, well.”
She gave a decisive nod. “You can get pregnant. You’ll just have to be carefully monitored.”
Heart valve replacement, and other assorted surgeries, won’t make pregnancy or childbirth easy, but I’d been told that with the right level of care, I can probably pull it off safely. Still, there was a larger issue.
“First I need a good man.”
Since she had no answer for that, I moved on and offered her tea or coffee.
“Coffee would be nice. We’re not drinking it at home anymore.”
“Good. I could use a cup, too.”
She followed me into the kitchen. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from your sister.”
I was surprised Mom hadn’t called out the cavalry to find her older daughter. She could certainly afford to. The fact she was letting me run with Wendy’s disappearance was as odd as any of the many things happening in our lives. I could only guess she was suspicious that things were worse than I’d told her, and wasn’t ready for details. Lately even her questions were perfunctory, as if she hoped my answers would be, as well.
I told her I had no new information for her. In my mind, “for her” changed a lie to a fib, although the nuns who educated me might not have noted the subtle shades of gray.
“You’re much neater than she is,” Mom said.
Being told I was better than Wendy at anything was as good as receiving a trophy. “Am I?”
“I dropped something off one day, and there was clutter everywhere. Piles of papers, dirty dishes. It was right before Analena was due. I felt sorry for her.”
I took out pods and filled the coffee maker. “Maybe Wendy was having a hard week. I have a taste of how tough her life is. Work, kids, a husband gone most of the time. I guess a few piles here and there were natural.”
Mom perched on the same stool Teo had used. “She was the neatest child. Neater than I was, if you can believe that. The kitchen smells good, by the way. What did you make for dinner last night?”
“Spaghetti sauce and meatballs. Noelle can roll a mean meatball.”
“And they like cooking?”
I nodded. “Do you remember all the nights you and I cooked together?”
“Apparently they were productive. Now you’re passing on what you learned.”
“Trying. Noelle remains convinced a tablespoon is a spoon that’s been left on the table.” I ventured what might sound like criticism. “I don’t think they cook much with their mom.”
“I don’t think Wendy cooks much period.”
“See my prior statement. Work, kids, husband at sea.”
“I tried to cook with Wendy, too. We did sometimes, bu
t your sister was always so busy with school activities.”
I hadn’t been as busy, and now I was glad. “Those were our best times together.”
“I never knew what else to do with you. Wendy kept me so busy, I never had to think about what to do next. But you? You were so self-contained. You were happy by yourself, doing whatever appealed to you. And I was afraid to interrupt.”
“Afraid?” I put the first mug under the coffee maker and pushed a button. Coffee poured out and smelled delicious.
“I don’t like being unsure of myself,” she said.
That being true, I couldn’t imagine a worse scenario for Mom than our lives at the moment. Wendy vanishing. Dad undergoing surgery. Unsure and insecure were the watchwords of our days. Of course finding a cabinet filled with controlled substances hadn’t helped me feel any more secure, either.
I decided to go back to my sister’s housekeeping. Could neglecting dishes and dusting be a symptom of drug abuse? Or was Mom, who cleans up after her vast array of cleaning ladies, judging my sister by her own unusual standards?
I set the first cup of coffee in front of her. “So when did Wendy go from being a neatnik to a slob?”
She sipped as I made my own, and I had the feeling she wasn’t trying to remember, she was trying to decide how to explain. She didn’t speak until I’d made myself as comfortable as I could on the second stool facing her.
By now she was staring into her cup. “Wendy changed after her friend died. It was a very emotional, a very difficult time for her. The last thing I wanted to do was nag, so I didn’t. I never found the right time to insist she start cleaning up after herself again, and she got used to letting things go.”
“You didn’t tell me what happened to Greta.” I had imagined a car accident, or some fatal childhood cancer, but she surprised me.
“It’s not the kind of thing I would have told you about, not unless I had to. But it might help you understand your sister. Greta drowned, and Wendy was there.”
“That’s awful. In a pool?” I was afraid to ask if the pool had been ours.
“It’s a terrible story. Greta and Wendy were thick as thieves. They were pretty girls, popular and smart. Wendy was prettier, and I’m not saying that because she was my daughter, but Greta was interesting. You know what I mean? One of those girls who’ll turn heads later in her life. Striking, I guess.”
A Family of Strangers Page 20