by P T Winger
“Really?” Alyssa’s eyes widened. “You’re serious? We don’t have to eat at the table tonight?”
“Yes.” Erin studied her daughter, bemused at her excitement. “Dad will eat in the den. You all need to leave him alone this evening.”
Alyssa nodded, grinning. “Sweet! Not Dad, I mean, but, you know.” She reinserted her earbuds and left the kitchen.
Erin needed to find out what was going on with Tiffany. Had the woman said anything to anyone about Erin’s visit the day before? She glanced at the clock. No, there wasn’t time to go to Tiffany’s house today. In fact, she needed to leave to go pick up Andrew.
A little while later, she waited for him in the school parking lot. When he came out, he stepped lightly and had a grin on his face. He got into the car.
She looked at him. “Well?”
“I’m on the wrestling team!”
She congratulated him. “So this will take the place of football?”
“This year, yeah. I have some stuff to learn about wrestling, but Coach Howell says I learn fast.”
“Well, I’m proud of you. And no more antics, right?”
He looked out the window. “Mom, don’t ruin it. I’m in a good mood.”
“Okay, okay.” Erin headed home and told him about dinner plans. Like Alyssa, he seemed surprised and pleased.
At dinnertime, the children came downstairs and got their plates, and Erin again told them to leave their father alone since he may have had a touch of the flu. They took their plates upstairs, where Erin was sure they’d be on the phone with their friends. Except for Ryan, who likely would play video games while he ate.
David remained in his recliner and waved away the plate of food Erin brought him. She took it back to the kitchen and ate at the table, watching the television mounted on the cabinet. She put on the local evening news channel, which reported on the death of Jeffrey Smith.
Erin watched, fascinated, as the news camera focused on a rocky ravine at the base of a cliff and two men carrying away a stretcher with a body bag strapped to it. Maybe Jeffrey had a moment of insanity and threw himself off the cliff. Had the salvia in the chocolate balls been to blame? She’d used such a small amount.
More likely, he’d grown upset after David said he wanted to remain in his marriage. Yes, that was it, she decided as she forked roast beef into her mouth. David wanted to remain married to Erin until their children were grown and out of the house because he didn’t want to pay child support. Maybe this had angered Jeffrey to the point of becoming irrational and ending his life. Later, when David realized he wanted to be with him, it was too late.
This explanation made more sense. The salvia could have caused him to hallucinate, but clearly he’d worked the rest of the day with no negative effects from the herb. And Erin’s intention for him had nothing to do with his decision to walk off a cliff.
She finished eating and put her plate into the dishwasher. What about Tiffany? Something had happened to her eyes, and given that Stacie had to quit cheerleading to take care of her, it must have been something bad since Tiffany lived vicariously through her cheerleader daughter. Perhaps Erin should pay the woman a visit tomorrow and see what she could find out. She’d take a basket of food with her.
The house was quiet after dinner. The children brought their plates down and Erin sent them back upstairs, which seemed fine with them. She remained in the kitchen, taking her time cleaning up. She didn’t want to go to the den and talk to David. She didn’t want to hear one more word about Jeffrey. David would come around in his own time, would realize that his marriage meant more than just waiting around until the children turned eighteen. Even if he was also attracted to men, at least he would still be married to her and might want her physically again.
Meanwhile, Alyssa was on the cheerleading squad now. Erin was thrilled for her.
She’d need to catch up with Coach Dumcas another day. In the meantime, things had been set in motion for Jake to stop bullying Ryan.
Erin paused, considering. Since Jeffrey had likely killed himself and Tiffany’s issue with her eyes had caused Stacie to quit the cheerleading squad, what would happen to Mrs. Fagan?
Probably nothing. The woman had said she’d speak to her son about his bullying, and this was all that was needed.
Having finished in the kitchen, she went upstairs and stopped at Ryan’s doorway. He sat in his gaming chair, moving little knobs on his controller and staring at the screen. The tip of his tongue stuck out as he concentrated on the screen, trying to get a blue and yellow figure up a ladder while green blobs nipped at the figure’s feet and legs. Fun, energetic music played through the speakers.
She watched his game for a moment and then asked, “How was school?”
He gave the usual answer. “Fine.” Then he inclined his head toward his book bag. “Yes, I got my homework done.”
She stepped into his room. “Okay. I figured you had. Hey, did that boy bother you today?”
Ryan continued his game. “He bothers everyone. Every day.”
“Well, you’ll be glad to know that I spoke to his mom. She said she’d talk to him.”
Ryan’s mouth opened, and he stared at her. “Mom! Why?” He dropped his controller onto his lap and put his hands on his head. “Oh, no.”
Erin sat on his bed. “What?”
The figure on the screen stood still on the ladder. “He’s going to beat me up worse now!”
“No, he’s not.” Erin gave a short laugh. “Did you hear me? His mother said she’d talk to him. We’re hoping you two will be friends.”
“Friends? Mom, seriously. We will never be friends. He wants to kill me.” On the screen, the figure became engulfed by green blobs and melted into liquid. The music turned foreboding. A sinister-sounding voice emitted from the speakers: “Level failed.”
“Look,” Erin said, leaning forward and smoothing Ryan’s hair, “Jake needs friends. He has low self-esteem.”
“I don’t care what kind of steam he has, he doesn’t want friends. He just wants to beat everybody up.” Shaking his head, Ryan heaved a sigh and picked up his controller. The blue and yellow figure jumped off a floor with flowing lava and began to climb up the ladder again.
Erin grunted in amusement. How nice it would be to start fresh whenever the blobs got to you. But no. Life moved on. “Well, I thought it would help. One reason people pick on others is because they have very little self-confidence. I think you could be a good buddy to him.”
Ryan gave a snort. “I’ll be his buddy only if he stops bothering me.”
Erin stood. “Oh, I think he’ll stop bothering you very soon.”
He shook his head again, but his attention was on his game. Erin left the room and looked in on Alyssa. She was lying on her back on the bed, her phone before her face, thumbs moving rapidly on the phone’s surface.
“Did you get enough to eat?” Erin asked.
Alyssa didn’t look at her and kept texting. “I ate a little. I don’t want to gain any weight.”
“What exactly happened to Stacie’s mom?”
Alyssa shrugged. “I don’t know. I told you. Something about her eyes.”
“How about if I drive over to her house tomorrow and look in on her. We used to be friends in high school. We were cheerleaders together.”
“Yes, you’ve told me many times. About half the cheerleaders have moms who cheered at the same school.” Her tone grew monotonous. “It’s a family tradition.”
Erin smiled. “As I’ve told you. Maybe someday your daughter will be a cheerleader, too.”
Alyssa shrugged and began texting again. “Maybe.”
Before bed, Erin looked in on David. He’d fallen asleep in the recliner. Instead of waking him up, she covered him with a blanket and turned off the television.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Erin woke before dawn. David lay snoring under a mound of blankets beside her, his mouth open and his jaw shadowed with unshaven beard. She didn’t know what ti
me he’d come up to bed.
She let him sleep and went downstairs to fix a meal for Tiffany and her family.
Later that morning, armed with a basket of baked chicken, biscuits, gravy, green beans and brownies, she drove over to Tiffany’s house. Six cars crowded the large driveway and she had to park on the street. Two women and a man clustered on the sidewalk, talking. Neighbors? They stared at her with wide, worried eyes as she emerged from her car.
Erin looked away quickly, made her way up the brick walk, and knocked softly at the front door.
An elderly man answered, saw the basket, and ushered her in. “She’s resting,” he said. His face looked drawn, with dark circles under his eyes and his mouth turned downward. “We brought her home from the hospital about an hour ago. You can leave that in the kitchen.”
Erin nodded. “How is she?”
“Not good.” He closed the door. “Are you from church, or...”
“I’m a friend. We went to high school together. Our daughters are cheerleaders.” The second and third statements were true at least.
He nodded, and asked no further questions. His hands at his sides opened and closed as if he wanted to be doing something more useful besides playing doorman.
Erin continued to the kitchen, a huge, airy room of granite countertops, maple cabinets, and stainless steel appliances, all polished and pristine. The floor tiles looked brand new. Compared to her kitchen with its stained countertops, century-old wood flooring and darkened exposed beams, this kitchen looked like it belonged in an ‘after’ photo on one of those before-and-after remodeling shows.
A woman stood at the sink washing dishes. She turned her head as Erin entered and said hello, then introduced herself as Tiffany’s sister, Bianca.
Erin remembered Bianca from high school. She’d been a senior when Tiffany was a sophomore. Both girls had been so gorgeous. Now, Bianca appeared to be letting her black hair fade toward gray instead of coloring it, but her eyes, while never as sapphire blue as Tiffany’s, were still pretty.
Erin set the basket on the counter and expressed her concern for Tiffany, hoping the woman would enlighten her.
“They don’t know if she’ll ever see again,” Bianca said.
Erin opened her hands wide. “What happened?”
“We don’t exactly know. Stacie found her in the bathroom when she got home from school, poor thing. Tiffany looked like she’d – like she’d tried to claw out her eyes, or something.” Bianca shivered, sniffed, and hugged herself. “I don’t understand why she would do that. Her eyes are her greatest source of pride besides her daughter.”
“They are beautiful,” Erin said. Or they were, anyway. She gave an inward shiver, imagining Tiffany in a bathroom digging her long, painted nails into her eyes, mutilating herself. Erin couldn’t imagine the excruciating pain that must have caused.
“She kept moaning and saying the same thing, over and over again. She finally stopped when the doctor gave her anesthesia to perform the surgery.”
Erin swallowed. “What was she saying?”
“‘She made me, she made me’,” Bianca said. “That’s what she kept saying. ‘She made me’.”
Erin realized she was clutching her purse tight. The chocolate candy she’d planned to give to the coach was still inside, pushed to the bottom beneath her wallet and other items. Her voice sounded thin. “Any idea who she was talking about?”
Bianca shook her head. “No idea. We’re trying to find out if anyone was in the house with her when it happened. The pool is getting retiled, but the workers all left in the same vehicle to go back to the tile store. None of them were around when it happened. The police think maybe someone broke in and sprayed a chemical in her eyes. But they can’t find any evidence.” Bianca lifted a tea kettle and filled it under the tap. “She’s been sleeping since she got home, so we haven’t spoken to her much. We’re just letting her rest. Would you like some tea?”
“No, thank you, I need to run.” Erin hurriedly removed items from the basket, letting Bianca know what was in the covered dishes. She wanted to get out right now in case Tiffany happened to wake up and discovered she was there. Erin imagined her, blood streaming through the bandages on both eyes, her arm outstretched, pointing one well-manicured finger at Erin. She made me.
She said goodbye to Bianca and headed back to the front door with her empty basket, hearing voices from upstairs. The elderly man wasn’t in sight, and she left quickly before anyone else in the house saw her. Outside, the small group was still standing on the sidewalk. As she passed them on the way to her car, one woman asked, “Weren’t you here the other day?”
Erin shook her head. “No.”
“On Monday,” one of the women said. She pointed across the street. “I was sitting on my porch reading my emails.” As if to prove her point, she held up her phone. “You came by at around two o’clock or so.”
Damn busybody. “Oh yes,” Erin said. “I thought you meant another time.” She continued on toward her car.
“So was she acting weird or anything when you were here?” the man asked.
Erin paused, considering. “She seemed a little sad. But I thought everything was all right.” She took a few more steps toward her car. “Excuse me, I have to go.”
“I’ll tell the police that if they come by again,” the second woman said. “They’ve already been by to ask questions. They wanted to see whether she might have been attacked.”
“They might want to talk to you,” the man said.
Erin opened her car door. “Okay, well, they can get in touch with me if they need to. I’m a friend of Tiffany’s.” She got into the car and shut the door before they could ask more questions.
If the police found out Erin had offered Tiffany candy – worse, if the neighbor across the street had seen Tiffany eat what Erin had offered her – Erin would be finished, and so would her family. Police would question the candy’s contents, perhaps raid her home. The Samsons would be shunned from the community and the media would pick up on the juicy news.
Jealous Mom Gives Former Prom Queen Tainted Candy, Causing Self-Injury, the headlines would read.
But Erin was in control. She’d return home and dispose of the two extra chocolate balls stored in a tureen in the butler’s pantry. As to the candy in her purse, she’d pay Coach Dumcas and his wife a visit in the next day or two.
On the drive home her unease was gradually replaced by excited chills. So far, David’s lover had died, and Alyssa had made it onto the cheerleading squad. The recipe appeared to be working, in its own way. Erin shivered and bit at her lip. She had done this.
She reached way down into her conscience and questioned why she felt very little guilt, and the only answer she could come up with was that Jeffrey and Tiffany had made their own choices. No one had pushed Jeffrey off the cliff. No one had held Tiffany’s fingers to her eyes. Erin had only wanted them to modify their decisions. She hadn’t wished death or self-mutilation on her enemies. Their choices were theirs alone.
What choice had Mrs. Fagan made? On a whim, Erin turned down Mrs. Fagan’s street and drove past the house. No clusters of worried neighbors stood around, and the driveway held one vehicle. Things appeared normal. That was good.
Mrs. Fagan stood in the front yard petting the dog while two boys, one of them Jake, threw a football back and forth. Mrs. Fagan looked up as Erin drove past and caught her eye. Erin waved. Mrs. Fagan’s hand stilled on the dog. Mouth slightly agape, she stared at the car and didn’t wave back.
Oh well. Could be that the woman hadn’t seen who it was. Erin continued to the next block and, instead of turning around and driving back up the street, chose to wind her way home by meandering through the neighborhood. She didn’t like all these houses sitting so close to each other. Her Victorian sat on a large lot with the nearest neighbors within shouting distance, but not close enough to see what they were doing in their yards. If any were, she was sure she would have been questioned while she skinned the
squirrel.
At home, she found David sitting up in bed. She offered to bring him soup and crackers, but he shook his head. He sat slumped against the bed pillows, face red and puffy from crying.
He must have truly loved Jeffrey. She looked at him, feeling a small pang of regret that she’d caused her husband to be in emotional pain.
But enough of regrets. David was the one who had strayed. She raised her chin. “You can stop this now.”
He wiped his nose with a tissue and sighed. “Stop what?”
“Stop pretending like you don’t have a wife and family to take care of.”
He shook his head. “Just leave me alone.”
“Like hell I will.” She reached down and grabbed his hand. “Come on, David. Get up and get back to being a father and husband.”
“I will,” he said. “I just need some time, okay?” He pulled his hand from hers, and his voice became a whisper. “Just need some time.”
He looked so bleak, so lost. “I’ll give you time, but remember your family.” She left the room and headed back down the stairs.
In the kitchen she sat at the nook by the window, looking out into the back yard but seeing only in her mind the TV-news footage of the body bag on the stretcher. What had gone through Jeffrey’s mind as he climbed to the top of the cliff?
And what had Tiffany been thinking about when she tore at her eyes with those long nails of hers? Erin would likely never find out.
The sound of the television in the den caught her attention. It was too loud and sounded like one of the kids had turned the channel to a shoot-’em-up movie. Erin restricted Ryan’s choice of shows to avoid any that were too violent, and this one sounded full of gunfire.
As she went through the butler’s pantry to reach the den via the dining room, she noticed the door to a cabinet hung open. Erin had placed the remaining chocolate balls into a silver tureen inside this cabinet and she was sure she’d shut the door when she retrieved the bag for the coach.
Had the kids been in here? Dear God, had they eaten the candy? Holding her breath, Erin pulled the tureen from the cabinet and whipped off the lid. To her relief, the last bag with the two remaining chocolate balls was there, intact. She had intended to throw these away as soon as she got home, but had forgotten. Now she removed the bag and went to the sink, where she dumped the two chocolate balls down the drain. She ran cold water and switched on the disposal to make sure the candy was destroyed.