Sheila remembered how she held her weeping sister. She rocked Molly in her arms and kept apologizing for calling her a fuckup.
But it was the truth—just as it was true that Sheila really was kind of a suck-up.
It was only more of the same as they got older. Sheila used to study articles and essays about family birth order, sibling rivalries, and sibling roles. She thought she could figure out her relationship with Molly the way she could figure out a tough accounting problem. She often wondered if she and Molly kept each other in their assigned roles. Maybe if they were estranged, Molly would be more responsible and Sheila could cut loose and have some fun, stop doing everything she thought was expected of her.
Molly was away at the University of Oregon when their dad died and their mom got sick. Sheila handled everything, of course, even though she was married with a full-time job—and vomiting daily, thanks to the baby on the way. She handled all her mother’s accounts, including bills from the University of Oregon. Sheila also wrote and signed the checks for Molly’s “food money.” Every month, she’d mail the check, along with a pathetic little note to Molly that their ailing mother would scrawl in her failing penmanship. Sheila got copies of her sister’s grades, too, and they were abysmal. Molly, by her own admission, was partying all the time. She was just three hours away in Eugene, but she never had time over the weekends to visit their sick mother.
It drove Sheila crazy. Yet she wouldn’t have trusted Molly to look after their mom anyway. Molly couldn’t even look after herself.
That summer when Sheila was so sick and haggard, her sister remained in Eugene to lifeguard at a country club. She’d always been a good swimmer. So while Sheila worked herself toward a nervous breakdown, she imagined Molly working on her tan and partying nightly with her college friends. Meanwhile, Sheila kept signing those “food money” checks for her sister.
One night she got a call from Molly’s roommate, Darcie. “Hi, Sheila, I just wanted to give you a heads-up that Molly’s in the hospital tonight—and maybe tomorrow night, too,” the girl explained.
“My God, what happened?”
“Uh, well, she took a bunch of sleeping pills this afternoon—like a whole bottle, prescription stuff. I don’t know how she got them.”
“Is she okay?” Sheila asked anxiously.
“Yeah, they pumped her stomach. They’re keeping her overnight for observation. I guess, in cases like this, the doctors are always afraid the patient will try it again.”
“So this wasn’t an accident,” Sheila said, hoping for some clarification. “She was trying to kill herself.”
“Or maybe get some attention,” Darcie said. “I’m not sure. I mean, Molly knows when I usually come home, and I’m the one who found her.”
“Did she leave a note or anything?”
“No, but I’m pretty sure I know what the problem is. Molly’s been really messed up lately . . .”
Lately? Sheila wanted to ask. She wiped a tear away. After the initial shock, she was starting to get frustrated. “What—what’s Molly messed up about this time?”
“Well, she’s been drinking even more than usual lately. There’s this senior, Jesse, and they’ve been seeing each other off and on all year. He just graduated, and he’s spending the summer here in Eugene. Molly’s pretty hung up over him, but I think he’s just using her. I don’t know the whole story. I haven’t even met Jesse yet. The other thing is that Molly’s worried about whether or not the school will take her back next semester, because her grades were so bad.”
This was the first Sheila had heard of Jesse, and the first time she’d heard of Molly actually caring about her grades.
“And she got fired,” Darcie added. “I think it’s because she kept showing up late for work—or not showing up at all. But Molly thinks it’s political, because she was seeing a club member’s son and his mother wanted to break them up.”
“This is someone else—in addition to Jesse?”
“Yeah, this one’s name is Brian.”
Sheila sighed. “Has Molly asked for me? Does she want me to come down there?”
Because I can’t, Sheila wanted to say. What with work, bouts of throwing up, and constant house calls to her sickly mother.
“Well, she could be out of the hospital tomorrow, so I wouldn’t bother making the trip. But she definitely needs someone to pay the hospital and ambulance bills. And you’ll have to send another check, too, because I need rent money. I’ve covered the last two months for her, and she owes me.”
Sheila thought about how miserable and scared her kid sister must have been, having just tried to kill herself hours before, sitting in a hospital bed amid a bunch of strangers in another city, three hours away.
And yet Sheila couldn’t help hating her.
Molly had a bedroom in their mother’s apartment. It made no sense that they were sending her money so she could live in another city, where she no longer had a job, all so she could be near some guy who apparently didn’t give a crap about her. If Molly was going to be irresponsible, she could do that a lot more cheaply at home.
There would still be a nurse on duty at her mom’s place. So it wasn’t like their mother would be left alone with Molly for any long stretch of time. In fact, Sheila even wondered if she could simply pay the nurse a little bit more to look after the two of them. Still, she thought about her mother in that wheelchair, up on the rooftop track, begging to be put out of her misery. Sheila wondered how her reckless, suicidal sister would have handled it.
But at the time, she couldn’t think of any other options. So she asked Molly to move back home, at least until school started in the fall.
Lying in bed alone, once again unable to sleep, Sheila thought about how different things would have been if only her sister hadn’t come home.
The dog next door started barking.
“Oh, God, spare me,” Sheila groaned.
She glanced at the digital clock on her nightstand: 1:43 A.M. It had been a little over a half hour since she’d turned the light out.
Sheila wondered if she’d be better off sleeping in Hannah’s room in the basement again. She wouldn’t hear the dog down there. Obviously, she’d need some help falling asleep up here. Ambien or bourbon? Though she took it often enough, she still didn’t completely trust Ambien. Dylan had told her that she’d once sleepwalked after taking Ambien, and another time, she’d had a whole conversation with him while asleep. Sheila didn’t remember a thing about either incident. Some people claimed that while under the influence of the stuff, they had cooked and eaten a meal, even made love or driven a car—and then had no memory of any of it. For Sheila, hearing stories like that made a couple of shots of bourbon seem a lot safer.
Trudy was still going on at full volume. It was a distressed sort of yowling.
“What the hell’s going on over there?” Sheila muttered, climbing out of bed.
Switching on the light, she made her way across the bedroom to the window. She moved the curtain to look outside.
Sheila let out a gasp.
The woman next door stood in her window, directly across the way. It was almost as if she was waiting for her. She wore a white, full-length nightgown, low-cut with straps. The lights were on behind her, making the gown practically transparent. She stared back at Sheila and remained perfectly still. She might as well have been a mannequin.
There was no sign of the dog, but Sheila could hear it yelping as if it were hurt.
Sheila quickly pulled the drape shut again.
“My God,” she muttered. What was wrong with that woman? And what was she doing to her poor dog?
Sheila stepped out to the hallway to see if another bedroom light was on. Was everyone else sleeping through this?
It was completely dark in the corridor. Apparently, she was the only one awake.
Sheila decided to have a couple of shots of bourbon. It wouldn’t make the barking go away, but at least she wouldn’t care so much.
Sh
e headed downstairs to the darkened first floor. Sometimes, when she was the only one awake, all the deserted, shadowy rooms could be slightly eerie. But right now, she was too angry to be scared. She even considered throwing on her coat, going over to the neighbor’s house, and banging on her door so she could have it out with her. It was almost as if this woman intended to make her life miserable. Maybe the neighbor was tormenting her dog in that room directly across the way just so it would bark when Sheila was trying to sleep. Why had the dog been relatively quiet the one and only night Dylan had slept in the master bedroom? Maybe last night the neighbor had seen Dylan in the bedroom before he’d turned off the lights. Maybe, since the drapes were shut tonight, the woman had gotten the dog to bark in hopes that Dylan would come to the window. Was that why she was wearing that skimpy nightgown—to give Dylan a show? Who wears a sexy nightgown like that when they’re sleeping alone, anyway?
Sheila knew her mind was reeling. As paranoid as it seemed, she couldn’t help feeling persecuted.
She wondered if that Leah woman was the one who had demolished her garden. After all, hadn’t she thrown that flower arrangement away? She’d even left it out on the front curb with the garbage and recycling so Sheila would be sure to see it.
Switching on the light in the kitchen, Sheila padded over to the cupboard. Then she got out the Jim Beam and her favorite jelly glass.
The barking finally stopped—at least, for the moment.
Sheila turned to glance out the window at the house next door. None of the first-floor lights were on. Sheila couldn’t shake the feeling that her awful new neighbor was standing there in the dark, studying her.
And she used to think the place was creepy back when it had been empty.
Sheila poured the Jim Beam. She started to reach for the glass but missed it and knocked it over. “Good one, Sheila,” she muttered. “Swell . . .”
At least the glass hadn’t broken. But she’d spilled bourbon across the boomerang-pattern counter. The pungent liquor smell filled the kitchen. Sheila grabbed a sponge, wiped up the mess, and then returned to the sink. As she wrung out the sponge, she felt something sharp bite into her hand in several places. It hurt like hell. “Shit!” she whispered.
Sheila quickly dropped the sponge and glanced at her hand. Her palm and two fingers were bleeding. The alcohol made the little cuts sting even more. She watched another spot on her hand start to bleed, and she noticed a tiny, embedded shard of glass. Wincing, Sheila picked it out.
She tore off some more sheets of paper towel and clutched them in her hand to soak up the blood.
She glanced over at the countertop again. The jelly glass wasn’t even cracked or chipped. Where had the glass come from?
Then she picked up the bottle of bourbon. It was half full. What was she thinking? She’d broken her own, self-preserving statute. She’d told herself she wouldn’t consume anything that had already been opened. And she’d opened this bottle sometime early last week.
Sheila set the wadded-up, blood-spotted paper towels by the sink. From the cupboard, she took out an old-fashioned glass. Then from the utensil drawer she dug out a small wire strainer. Setting the strainer on the glass, she poured at least three shots’ worth of bourbon through the strainer.
She could see the ground glass in the strainer, glistening like diamonds.
She immediately thought of Eden. She thought of that sweet, innocent act she’d tried to pull over on her in the garden earlier tonight.
Sheila held the bourbon bottle up to the light, shook it a little, and watched the sparkling bits swirl in the amber liquid.
She wondered if the little bitch had put some eye drops in there, too, while she was at it.
*
Forty-five minutes later, Sheila took half of an Ambien and crawled into her bed again.
She’d left the light on in the kitchen, and another one on in the den. She wanted the woman next door to think she was still up. The whole time she’d been awake, Trudy hadn’t barked at all. Whether or not that was just a coincidence, Sheila wasn’t taking any chances.
She’d hidden the bottle of bourbon on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard behind some trays and chafing dishes she broke out only on special occasions. For the time being, it would be safe back there. Besides, no one in the house touched the bourbon except her.
Sheila had decided to keep the tainted bottle of Jim Beam because she wanted to try an experiment on Eden. At some point tomorrow night, she’d sit down with her stepdaughter. She’d apologize for all their misunderstandings. Then she’d propose they both have a very grownup toast to anew start with just a little bit of bourbon. Certainly, Eden had tried bourbon before. All she had to do was take a few sips.
If the girl refused to drink it, then, as far as Sheila was concerned, that would be an admission of guilt. And considering everything else that had happened in the last few days, it was just the tip of the iceberg.
Sheila still hoped to gather more information about her from some of Antonia’s friends. She just needed to get her hands on that guest book from the memorial service. She counted on the FedEx package finally arriving tomorrow.
Of course, when she talked to Antonia’s friends, she’d need to be tactful. But how could she tactfully ask them the question on her mind?
Do you think your friend, Antonia, was murdered by her daughter?
Right now, it seemed very, very possible.
Tossing back the bedcovers, Sheila climbed out of bed and started across the room toward the door. Her legs felt wobbly, and she realized the Ambien must have started kicking in.
Sheila checked the door to make sure it was locked. Then she made her way back to bed.
Her last thought before she lost consciousness wasn’t about Eden or Antonia.
It was about someone she’d never even met. For some reason, Sheila thought of Ms. Warren. She imagined Eden’s teacher earlier tonight, hanging on Dylan and getting her scent all over him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Saturday—3:28 A.M.
Shoreline
Miranda Warren was alone and half asleep in her queen-size bed.
Whenever she heard a strange noise in the house late at night, it was usually one of her sons snoring or thrashing around in his sleep. Their bedroom was next to hers. But Seth and Finn were at her ex-husband’s this weekend.
Miranda was pretty sure the sound she’d heard—the one that had woken her minutes ago—had been a raccoon in her garbage. Her ranch house was on a wooded, dead-end street. The raccoons came out at night to scavenge, often in packs and sometimes with their babies. About a year ago, she’d heard a horrible racket in the tall evergreen right outside her window, and she’d realized it had been two raccoons mating. It seemed like a pretty crazy place to have sex, up in a tree.
But who was she to criticize? She’d just had sex in her car earlier tonight. It had been frantic, sweaty, and, at times, uncomfortable. But it had also been damn hot. She’d spent the rest of the evening with a smile on her face.
Yes, he was a married guy. And calling it unprofessional on her part was the understatement of the year. Still, the whole wicked experience was exciting and sexy. Miranda told herself she deserved every pleasurable minute.
It was just too bad she’d had to go to bed alone tonight.
Miranda thought she heard another sound. Just the raccoons looking for food, she told herself again. If they made a mess outside, she’d clean it up in the morning.
She turned over on her left side and adjusted the pale blue quilt, tucking it under her chin.
Then Miranda remembered something. The garbage collectors had come Friday morning. There was no garbage, no food scents to attract the raccoons.
She lay there in the dark, suddenly afraid to move.
She’d have to roll over to reach for her bedside lamp or check the bedroom door. But she couldn’t. She kept perfectly still and listened for the next sound. It was deathly quiet.
Miranda wasn’t sure
how much time passed, but she finally rolled over and blindly reached for the lamp. Her hand frantically fanned at the air for a moment before she touched the lamp base and worked her way up to the switch. She turned on the light.
Now he knows you’re awake, she thought.
A floorboard creaked. It sounded like it came from the hallway.
She stared at the closed bedroom door. The lock on the doorknob didn’t work. It was one of those things she’d been meaning to get fixed. But it only occurred to her on these weekends when she was alone in the house.
She thought she saw the knob twist to one side.
Stop it, she told herself. Now you’re imagining things.
Except for her bedroom door, the house was all locked up. She’d checked everything before going to bed. She was fine. So she’d heard some noises outside. No one had broken in.
Wasn’t it funny—that she’d think someone was coming to kill her on this particular night? Did it have anything to do with the fact that she’d finally had some great sex with a married guy? Could it be that she was feeling a little guilty? Maybe she thought she was going to be punished for actually having some fun. A shrink would have had a field day analyzing her right now.
Still, she was frightened.
Miranda figured she’d have to get out of bed and check every room in the house. It was ridiculous, but it was the only way she’d ever fall asleep again tonight.
She’d left her smartphone on the nightstand, right beside the old landline they still used on rare occasions. Grabbing her phone, Miranda switched it on so she could quickly call 9-1-1—if it became necessary. She climbed out of bed, shivering as the air hit her bare legs and the strip of midriff exposed between the top band of her pink panties and her small T-shirt.
In the corner of her bedroom, she had a basket of yarn and the beginnings of a sweater she’d been knitting for Finn, one of those projects she’d probably never finish. Miranda took one of the long knitting needles and tucked it under her arm. Tiptoeing toward the door, she put her ear to it and listened for a moment. Silence.
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