I pull into a space right next to Lena’s Suburban. Lena is the only person I know who doesn’t have children, and yet her lifestyle demands an enormous vehicle. She does most of the deliveries for the Blue Chandelier Catering Service. She’s also the manager here at the Blue Chandelier, a low-key coffee shop that also serves up oversized portioned treats. It’s my favorite place to come and unwind, and I love it that much more because it’s quickly become Lena’s baby.
When we moved here, it was the first place she applied, and, of course, they loved her. I head on in and soak in the heavenly scent of coffee. It’s the first thing that hits you right before you’re overcome with the ethereal nature of the ambiance. There’s a large outdoor patio out back that delivers an expansive ocean view. It’s always packed. You can never even hope to get a seat there. Every stay-at-home mom has turned this into her hub. It’s the go-to place to have coffee, and the writers seem to have taken a liking to it as well. I can certainly see why. The mood is romantic in a tragic way, and they play Enya on a loop. The inside, however, is just as scenic, with the entire ceiling covered in ornate chandeliers in every hue of its namesake color. The floors are dark gray wooden-patterned porcelain tiles with the hint of silver sparkles to them. The walls are covered with navy shiplap, and there are wreaths made of lavender flowers just about everywhere you look. It’s not your typical greasy spoon, and the décor is something out of a movie. I give a quick look around for Lena, and my eyes snag on a couple of all too familiar women, my least favorite cock handler and the forever hippie—Astrid and Bridget. Astrid spots me, and they cease their conversation to take a moment to glare my way.
“Here you are.” Lena comes at me with a contrived embrace, coupled with steaming hot coffee in both hands, as she ushers me along to a table near the front, far enough from the bitter mommy brigade so they can’t hear our conversation and yet not out of their line of vision. Lena was never one to run from a problem.
I can’t help but frown a bit at my sister. Her eyes are heavily drawn in with black kohl, a look that both works for her and against her. Sure, it makes her pale green eyes pop, but it also makes her look like a thirty-year-old Goth gone wrong.
“What’s this about the killer?”
She wrinkles her nose as she leans in tight. “Not the killer. They’ve finally identified the body.”
I suck in a quick breath. “The girl!” I hated referring to her as the body. It’s too generic. I have never understood the way someone is a beloved person one moment, a corpse the next. It erases every humanistic thing and reduces them to a phylum that doesn’t even exist. You are less than an animal, relegated to something akin to morbid furniture.
“Her name was Erika Melon. She was from Manhattan. Her pimp helped identify her.”
“I bet he did, and I bet he did it! What was she doing all the way in Percy? We’re not exactly an L train from Times Square.”
She averts her eyes at my weak attempt at New York humor. “They don’t know. There are whispers of forensic evidence, but other than that, they have nothing. No leads, no motive, no nothing.” Her eyes narrow in on me the way they do when she’s good and pissed. “Just you, my sweet sister.” Her plain nails drum against the marble table.
“I’m no lead, and I’m no suspect. The police questioned me that night and haven’t been back. Thank goodness.” I can’t help but sneak a glance over my shoulder, only to meet up with Bridget’s dark soulless eyes and I shudder without meaning to. “I have to tell you something,” I practically mouth the words to my sister, and her hot breath heats the space between us. I pull up my phone and read off the emails I’ve received from that loon.
“Holy shit.” She gives a long blink. “Who do you think did it?”
“I don’t know. It could be anyone. We might not have had the world’s longest party, but we had an army of angry mothers filling every orifice.”
She grunts over at Astrid and Bridget just as they break out into an obnoxious cackle. “I bet it’s one of those bitches.” Lena has a dead look about her in general. She’s stunning in an I-just-crawled-out-of-a-casket-way, but by and large it creeps women out. Men seem to love her, so there’s that.
“I thought so, too, but the more I analyzed that day, the more I’m certain they were both downstairs the entire time.”
“Not true. I let the brunette bitch in. You opened the cocky gate.”
I bite down on my bottom lip so hard I taste the salty brine of my own blood. “I think maybe she sent them.” I tick my head out the window, indicating yet another infamous she, and Lena’s eyes enlarge a notch. It’s a visceral reaction, but then, my mother only seems capable of eliciting those in anybody.
“No.” She shakes her head aggressively. “Don’t say her name. Don’t you call that demon into existence. There is no way in hell she’s capable of doing any of that, and you know it.”
“She’s capable.” Tears moisten my eyes, and I’m quick to blink them away.
Last we saw of our mother, we were running for the car, arms full of clothes, of books. We had meant to escape while she was away at the store, but she forgot her purse and came back in half the time we had predicted. She was furious, livid. Our mother is a morbidly obese woman, with a tuft of black hair that rises over her head a good six inches. She was as insane to look at as she was on the inside, and yet for so many years we had bought into everything she was selling, namely us. And we were weak on that getaway day, our limbs rubbery from years of sitting, our lungs stretched to capacity as we tried to dive into our aunt’s Ford Tempo.
Exactly one year after the great escape, our aunt was found in a motel room, an empty pill bottle by her side, facedown in the bathtub. My theory has always been that my mother had drowned her first. Of course, it was ruled a suicide. My mother was impervious to law enforcement and any other governing bodies that rule the land. She has had a get away with bullshit—get away with murder free card for as long as I could remember.
Lena closes her eyes a moment, those dark half-moons pressed with charcoal shadow fold in on themselves like Russian nesting dolls. Lena’s eyelids have been getting progressively fragile and crepey. We inherited our thin skin from our mother, among other far more indistinguishable features such as our inability to tell the truth. As much as I appreciate starting over in Percy Bay, it feels as if we’re building a sandcastle. I can feel the tide shifting, see the waves coming. It won’t be pretty when it hits. It never is.
“It wasn’t her.” Lena gives a hard sigh. “Don’t do this to yourself. She’s not out to get us anymore.” She shoots a cold glance out the window as if she were having a hard time buying this bullshit herself. Her gaze narrows over my shoulder. “The Chandelier is hosting a fundraiser for the community center next weekend out on the pier. Bring Bram and the kids. I know for a fact they’ll be there.” She casts a quick glance their way once again as they light up the room with cackles. My sister’s eyes meet up with mine. “Please.”
“A fundraiser? I mingled with a corpse at that last one. No thank you.”
“You’ll need this if you want to fit in, believe me. There’s no escaping these social circles. The best thing to do is make amends. Play nice then fade into the background like a good little girl. Your reward will be raising your kids in a stable environment. You can’t live on the run your whole lives, Ree.”
“I know.” I steal a quick glance over my shoulder as Astrid leans in hard across the table. Her white skintight jeans show off the perfect heart of her bottom, and I can’t help but scowl at her. I hate the thought of having her around Bram. Stupid, I know, but it doesn’t change the fact I feel that way. Bridget catches my eye, and her lip curls into a half-smile. It spells out danger more than it does anything amicable, so I turn back around. “I’ll do it.”
“You will?” Lena lifts a carefully lined brow. Lena has always exercised her right to emulate a Disney villain.
“Yes. But only because you have to be there and endure their wrath. I’ll b
e your buffer.”
She gives me a swift kick under the table. “I’m your buffer, and you know it.”
“I know it.” I kiss the lip of my mug and take a careful sip. I glance back at the cocky hens to my right, and Astrid turns to look my way, her eyes slit to nothing. There’s an inherent coldness about her, and I’ve felt this from the beginning. I’ve got news for Lena—these ladies don’t know the meaning of the word nice.
Lena shakes her head, and those dark bangs cut rigid and uneven flirt with her brows. “Your paranoia is on high. It’s not Mom.”
I give a slight nod as if agreeing, but, deep down, I’m afraid it is.
Someone is watching me. Perhaps having me watched. Yes, my paranoia is on high. Someone has died. Someone is calling out to me, calling me out. Regardless, something is happening. And I have a foreboding feeling this will not end well.
Bram
Hennessy is a bustling town three and a half hours north of Percy Bay, so I’ve pitched for a hotel room. Correction—Smile Wide has pitched for a hotel room, a nice one with a balcony facing a river to my left, the trash receptacles behind the hotel to my right.
There is a full bar and a shower roomy enough to fit my entire family, and how I wish they were here with me to fill it. Not that I’ve made it a practice to shower with them all in number. Lena’s old swimming pool was as close as we ever got to that endeavor. But being here without them, anywhere without them, makes them feel less real, a dream that is slowly evaporating.
A very real part of me is frightened that I will wake up and it will be the day after Simone’s body was discovered—the body I discovered. That my beautiful wife, present tense, my beautiful children, were just a work of my overactive imagination. It’s terrifying to think about. My old life, the one I shared for years with Simone, was tense, cloying, filled with terrors far before our kids ever set foot into the lake that fateful day. Simone had the skills to suck the air out of the room and leave you choking for your next breath. She may have been witty and intelligent—she certainly could do anything better than me as she used to sing. She was as sharp as a blade in every arena, but she was a loaded gun that was pointed at my temple, at my beating heart every minute we shared together.
The dental convention is held in a cavernous hall somewhere buried beneath this labyrinth-like structure. Tarquin, one of my colleagues who happens to own the practice, gifted me the honor to attend today’s riveting panels. As the low man on the totem pole, it was apparent it would be me going from the start. One might think in a large practice of nine dentists there would be an outcry over who had the chance to enjoy a free night in a hotel with the peace and quiet of the river—the dental convention itself is somewhat interesting if not strictly informative, but, in truth, dentists by and large are content residing in their own habitat. Fingers flexing in and out of other people’s mouths. It’s not nearly as sexual in nature as it sounds. It’s quite mundane, but I will admit, it is personal, intimate in some respects.
That’s why when our neighbor, chicken lover extraordinaire, Astrid Nelson, strutted into the office yesterday and landed in my chair—my chair—I marveled at the coincidence, but when she gave that sly bedroom-eye look, I quickly realized it was most likely no coincidence. Perhaps the secretary’s palm was greased a little money, perhaps it was a twisted version of fate, but something did not feel right. And as soon as I started probing around at that problem area she claimed to have, her tongue caressed my gloved finger in a manner that let me know she was up for my probing fingers to land elsewhere.
I try my best to brush Astrid and her wet mouth out of my mind as I take the elevator down. I’ve missed the initial sign-in, the keynote, and most likely the first session. The traffic over was thicker than expected. Soccer moms seemed to fill the highways and every side street at ungodly hours, bussing their sleepy children to better schools far out of range.
The elevator spits me out on the lobby level and I step out, the convention an entire floor beneath me, and I cringe as the doors whoosh shut from behind. I press the button and wait impatiently with my hand clutching my briefcase, a caramel leather box my mother bought for me last Christmas. My mother was a gossip columnist in New York, a successful one at that, but her time has come and gone. The era of paparazzi had eaten her career in a single bound, and now she is relegated to the odd interview on what it’s like to have gone from a who’s who to a has-been. I give the button a few more spastic twitches, looking like the quintessential businessman, an important one at that, who has far too many places to be at once. I like the narrative far better than the real one, the dental practitioner who lost his family, his practice, and his mind all in one year’s time. The low man on the totem pole who is stuck on the wrong floor at the wrong hour wondering if he is going to spend the rest of his life in this strange limbo, anticipating someone to point the finger at me and say those words I dread to hear: it’s you.
The click of heels struts by, and like some testosterone-fueled ape, my head turns lazily in their direction. My eyes hook on a somewhat familiar frame, petite, wavy dark hair that seems to bounce in rhythm with the girl’s footsteps, and I do a neck breaking double take. My entire body does a one-eighty, and I hear the elevator doors open and close behind me.
My eyes latch over her person with a macabre sense of wonder, of outright fear. My feet move swiftly toward her. The businessman with too many directions to move in has chosen the wrong one. I step in line with her, ten paces behind, six, then three. I’m close enough to touch her, and as soon as we hit the end of the foyer, I snatch her by the elbow and spin her around. My hands fall over her shoulders, caging her in.
“Holy shit,” I mutter as I take her in, same dark eyes, those easy lips that have wrapped themselves around every part of my body.
Her lips part, a strange croaking sound dislodges as if she wasn’t sure who I was, and she steps backwards cautiously at first, her face, still pretty, hardened with time, knife sharp lines embedded around her mouth, evidence she still smokes.
She gives a subtle shake of the head before darting in the opposite direction, her strides evening out as she darts down a carpeted corridor, and just like that, it’s over.
Loretta. I lean against the wall as if I needed it to hold me upright. I’m so very relieved not a word was exchanged, and why would it be? She doesn’t want to know me. Nobody in their right mind does. I close my eyes a moment, and those countless hotel rooms zoom by like a slide show. My eyes spring wide again, and my feet start working as I head to the nearest elevator, ambling my way to the hornets’ nest of dental pride on this side of the coast. A couple of girls, no older than teenagers, sign me in and give me my badge to wear with pride, Bram Woodley Liar at Large, and my hand shakes as I take it.
Someway, somehow, my present collided with my past this afternoon. Those blood red pots that took up residence on the stove this morning ring through my mind like a bell. I don’t absorb a thing about thrilling new dental products as I wander aimlessly up and down the cluttered aisles with their euphoric sales teams and shiny new gadgets. I pay little attention at the seminar regarding insurance. There is no volition in me to try out the new dental products when I’m asked to participate. No. I’m only here in body, not in any other capacity. At noon, I sit alone facing a stone wall on the outdoor patio while pretending to eat a generous portion of prime rib. I can’t take a bite.
And once the final breakout session of the day is over, a refresher course on computer solutions, I head straight for my room, lock the door, and meander to the window to catch a glimpse of the river, something calming, and God knows I could use a tranquilizer right about now. But I don’t look left to the river. Instead, my gaze shifts right. It has to. It’s practically demanded of it. The asphalt around the dumpsters is inundated with men in navy jackets, and miles of bright yellow caution tape cuts through the monochromatic day like an obstruction, sunny lasers that eat up your eyes. A white blanket lies over a body in the center of the melee
, and I can’t breathe. There is no air left in this room. My body slaps numb with shock, and a bite of sweat ignites under my arms. One dark clump of wavy hair peers out from the tarp they’ve set over her, and my stomach churns hot.
Holy shit. It’s happening. A strange feeling comes over me. I’ve stepped onto a haunted carousel, and there’s no way to safely get off.
My body bucks and I stagger for the bathroom, but vomit hard into the wastebasket instead. I run my face under the faucet for a small eternity before coming to and throwing my things back into my suitcase. I don’t spend the night. I head home to my family, drive three and a half hours listening to the news. Homicide behind the Hennessy Continental Hotel. An unidentified young woman found strangled, her hand maimed.
I slam my palm over the steering wheel as I eat asphalt trying to make my way to Percy, to Ree, to my children whom I’m terrified will never know me past their youth. Everything is unraveling. Everything is coming undone.
Everything I’ve feared has come to pass.
Loretta is dead. Is she? How I wish it were anyone else. But this is me, my luck I’ve tainted her with. Just one touch and she’s gone.
Something horrible has happened.
It’s still happening.
Ree
May 21st
Peter had another seminar in Manhattan yesterday, and in a fit of nostalgia—and longing to have a sexy escape with my husband, I joined him. I arranged for Kelly to show just after nine. Peter drove out at six thirty. I didn’t tell him I would be inviting myself as his plus one, but then, I didn’t think I had to. I thought what fun! How totally awesome to surprise a man who can never be surprised! I could hardly wait to see him. I treated myself to coffee and lunch in midtown, bought a new pair of shoes in an upscale boutique—a treat I felt I had earned after a long week with the twins. Who are we kidding? A long eight years! I jest! Not really, but that derails my point. I had earned them, and they were delicious, calling out to me in that cantaloupe color I crave on occasion. So I put them on, drove to Javits Center, and made my way to the convention floor where I knew I would find my husband, but he never showed. I asked the girls in charge to please let me know if he made it to the meeting, and they looked at me as if I were a certifiable stalker. So I did the only thing I could think to do without ruining the surprise. I scouted his services location. He was miles away, close to the pricey cantaloupe shoe shop (which burned me. Do you know how futile driving in the city is? It feels like a slow death). But I found him. At Renata’s restaurant—coming out of Renata’s just as I ran up the block. (Have I mentioned parking is impossible?) I found him.
Psychological Thriller Boxed Set Page 5