by Pamela Cowan
“So what are you saying? You want one more killing to show that I'm not in charge? One more death will make you feel like a man?”
“I'm saying,” said Howard, enunciating each word in a forceful tone she'd never heard before, “that I will be the one who says when we stop. Until I say so, you will keep finding targets, and I will keep pulling the trigger. That might mean one more—that might mean ten more.”
“And if I don't want to go along with this?”
“I will be very, very upset with you.”
They stood there while the warmth of the sun sent mist curling around them, face to face, like two friends out for a stroll in the park, who had met each other by chance and stopped to chat. Only someone very observant would have noticed the crossed arms, stares that lasted too long, flared nostrils, and fighting stance each had adopted.
Storm knew one way to end the hostilities was to distract him. She dropped her arms to her sides.
“Fine, okay, maybe you're right. Maybe we aren't done yet.”
“That was a fast turnaround,” said Howard, his disbelief apparent.
“I need a favor.”
“I see,” said Howard, waiting.
“I just found out my father got out of prison.”
“So?”
“So, I want you to kill him,” she said without preamble.
“What?” asked Howard, taken aback. “Why?”
“Because I want him to be dead,” she answered simply.
“He’s that bad.”
“That bad.”
Storm shivered. Howard took off his coat and, standing in front of her, slipped it around her shoulders. His hands stayed pressed against her back, and he moved forward until she was held firmly against him. She didn’t try to break away.
As much as she wanted Tom, there was something she needed from Howard. It would be stupid to antagonize him. Besides, his coat was warm. It smelled good, like dial soap and citrus aftershave. Not sure why, she suddenly began to cry, deep sobs that left her shaking. She pressed herself against Howard. He held her, made soothing noises, and let her cry.
“You don't have to be afraid anymore,” he told her after a while. “Howard will kill all the monsters for you.”
“Will you?” she asked, her lower lip trembling like a child’s.
Softly, he leaned in, kissed the corner of her mouth and whispered in her ear. “I will,” he promised.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE STREET WAS WET, but it had stopped raining. It was cold, misty, and miserable. A distant glow was either the rising sun or the lights of Portland.
Running had been a challenge that morning. Getting out of bed had been almost painful. The cast on her wrist, which she’d had to put up with for over a month, made Storm feel like screaming. She had no desire to face the cold gray streets.
Ever since the night at the bar, when she helped Howard take Angela Ruiz, her mind had been playing tricks on her. She was seeing her father everywhere.
It had happened for the first time that night, in the parking lot of The Cooler. She'd seen a man in profile who looked like her father, but when he got out of his car, she realized he wasn’t. A week later, she thought she'd caught a glimpse of him near the back of a grocery store. She'd called up her courage and pushed her cart in that direction, but when she got there, she was alone. Now, nearly every day she saw a face in a crowd, a blur reflected in a window, and she was scared.
The fear, she knew, was unreasonable. She was no scrawny thirteen-year-old. She was a grown woman and no victim. In fact, part of her strength came from her very conscious choice to never be a victim again.
Her father was nothing more than a stranger, who happened to live in the same town. It was a big town; they didn't have to bump into each other. So why did they? Or was it all just her imagination? Maybe the problem was that she wanted it to be true. If her father was stalking her, didn't that mean she had every reason to use the handgun she'd begun to carry? Maybe Tom hadn’t been completely wrong about that.
Storm was an officer of the court, and even though Washington County didn't want their probation officers to be armed, she'd gone through the same training required for police officers and had even put in extra time on the firing range because she hated it and was therefore bad at it. It was a weakness, but she eventually overcame it. Now she knew how to handle a weapon, how to load and sight and pull the trigger. Part of her wanted to put that knowledge to good use.
The other part of her—the rational, logical, mom part, who would have a difficult time explaining why she had killed her children's grandfather—made her realize her wish would not be granted. She couldn’t kill her own father.
Luckily, she had Howard. Or did she? Howard had been quiet all week. No phone calls. No dropping into the office unexpectedly. This time, it didn’t seem like a peaceful break. This time, it felt like abandonment.
She realized her moods were a little bit erratic, jumping from anger at Howard for not calling, to fear that he’d found and confronted her father, who was now lying dead in some dark alley. Then she would decide she was being melodramatic and far too inventive.
The best course would be to forget her father, forget Howard and the justice killings, and make the best life for her and her family as possible.
After all, she had a duty to make sure her kids were not messed up the way she was. Her father? Fuck him. He wasn't going to ruin her life. He'd done enough of that.
When she got home from her run, she was surprised to see activity in the kitchen. Why was everyone up so early? A stab of anxiety lanced through her, and she ran up the back porch steps and burst into the kitchen.
“Happy Valentine's Day, Mommy,” sang out her family.
The scent of chocolate and freshly brewed coffee filled the air. Tom turned from the stove and set a plate at her place at the kitchen bar. Joel sat, swinging his legs while Lindsey put forks out.
“We made Valentine pantakes,” shouted Joel.
“Pancakes,” corrected Storm automatically. “Wow, do they ever look good.”
“They're hearts,” Lindsey told her proudly, “and they got chocolate chips. Come on, Mommy, eat.”
“I'm eating. I'm eating,” Storm reassured her daughter. “Wow, this is really something.” She looked at Tom and sent him a grateful smile. “I totally forgot about Valentine's Day.”
The meal was fun. Tom had made pancakes in the shape of hearts, dotted with chocolate chips. He served them with a drizzle of maple syrup and a ghastly amount of whipped cream.
“Well?” he asked, after she'd taken a bite. “Do you like them?”
“Do you, Mommy? Do you?” asked the kids.
Storm set down her fork, chewed extravagantly, swallowed audibly, looked at her waiting family, and said the magic words. “They're even better than Waffle Whips.”
The kitchen erupted into a total uproar. It didn't last long, as the kids, who’d apparently nearly starved to death in the twenty minutes they’d had to wait for their mother's return, fell quiet as they gorged on pancakes.
As she sipped her coffee, Storm picked the chocolate chips out of her pancakes. They were too sweet for morning. She wished someone with a camera could capture this scene. It belonged in a frame on her desk. ‘The Perfect Family at Breakfast’ would have been the title. Maybe she would paint it from memory someday. Thinking about this imaginary painting, she studied her family with a critical eye.
Tom wore his worn red-and-black checked robe over white flannel pajamas decorated with bright-red chili peppers—a birthday gift from his daughter. He'd been losing hair, and though it bothered him, Storm wished it would hurry up and all fall out. He would be a handsome bald man, and eventually he'd realize that.
Joel looked as if he'd gone to bed with his hair still damp from his shower. One side was plastered to the side of his head. The other stood up in random spikes. She wanted to get a spritz bottle and a comb but stilled the impulse.
Lindsey cut the edges o
ff her pancakes with her fork. She hated edges and not just the ones on bread, like most kids.
Sometimes, Storm saw herself reflected in her daughter's quirks. Pointedly, she picked up her fork, sliced off an edge, and ate it.
“Oh, I almost forgot. A package came for you yesterday,” said Tom. “Alex brought it over. Grace told him it showed up by mistake. Oh, and he said to tell you they're sorry they forgot to bring our casserole dish back. The one from Thanksgiving.”
“They're so sweet,” said Storm. “If I need the thing I’ll go next door and get it. I wonder what’s in the package. I don’t remember ordering anything.”
“I figured maybe a Valentine's gift from a secret admirer? Or maybe a gift for a really thoughtful husband?”
Storm shook her head. “No to both, I’m afraid. Where is it?”
“Hold on, I'll get it. It's sort of heavy.”
Storm acknowledged Lindsey's questioning look with a shrug. “I don't know what it is. You think your dad might be pulling a trick.”
“I don't know. He didn't say he was,” said Lindsey, impressively serious. Storm wondered if she was pretending not to know. “You're going to be a good poker player someday,” said Stormy.
“I already am,” bragged Lindsey. “I beat Dad and Rylan at five card draw.”
“Me too,” said Joel. “I played five card drawed.”
“Draw,” corrected Storm and Lindsey at the same time. They exchanged amused looks.
“That must have been fun,” Storm said to her youngest.
“Here you go,” said Tom, setting a brown cardboard box large enough to hold a German shepherd puppy on the bar top. Storm looked at it suspiciously, but it didn't move or make any noise, so she figured she was safe. Tom had been hinting at wanting to get a dog for the kids. A puppy they could grow up with.
There was a mailing label, but the name on the return address wasn't familiar, and the address itself had been torn off by something by the looks of it, probably something with metal teeth.
“Want me to open it for you?” Tom asked Storm.
“Please,” she said, moving her plate aside and standing so she could see inside once he had.
He took a knife from the magnetic holder on the side of the fridge and sliced through the tape. Then he stepped back to let her open it.
The scent of lilacs should have been enough of a clue to whom had sent the box. However, it wasn't until she slid aside the felt wrapping and revealed the jewelry box at the top of the file folders that she knew.
Aunt June was her mother's aunt and the woman who had raised her after the accident. This had been her jewelry box. There could have been only one reason it had been sent to her.
The realization that her aunt must have died struck Storm with the force of a sucker punch. She didn't have time to hide her reaction, which was fierce and overwhelming.
“Nooo,” she said, the word stretched out, then dwindled to a whisper, a moan of surging pain. Eyes shut, an agony of regret filled her as the memories came flooding in.
“Get off my porch, Don.” That was her aunt, old but unbent, standing on her front porch, a rifle resting in the crook of one scrawny arm. “My niece was an ass for marrying you, and I'm an ass for letting you live. Get yourself gone.”
Aunt June, or properly, Great-aunt June, standing between Storm and her father, was one of Storm's best memories. She'd been the only person who had ever tried to protect her from her father, though certainly not the only one to guess that Storm and her mother were being abused.
Another memory came to the fore. Aunt June scolding. “Of course you'll go back to school. You didn't burn off your frontal lobe, did you? Get your clothes on and get on that bus.”
Later, when the letter came, “The court says you belong with your dad. They think it's good to keep family together. If you told them the truth about that day . . .”
But Storm had pressed her lips together tightly and shook her head. She would not talk about it, not to her aunt and certainly not to strangers.
Storm remembered how she brushed her aunt's hair. The long chestnut strands mixed with threads of silvery gray were beautiful. Storm liked taking out the big rollers, brushing out the loose curls that flowed to the middle of her aunt's back.
“Old women don't have to cut their hair short so they look like boys. Whoever had that idea was a woman who didn't like competition!”
Her aunt had all sorts of ideas and little sayings like that, things that had stayed with Storm and which she continued to practice.
“You don't earn happiness, you choose it. Cook corn six minutes on a full boil, no more, no less. When you put your spare tire on, tighten the bolts in a star pattern, first with your fingers, then a wrench. It's as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is a poor one. If a horse throws you, buy a nicer horse.”
Storm's elbows were propped on the table, her face buried in her hands. Tom was rubbing her back. The kids were fussing, concern and fear in their voices. The plaintive sounds finally broke through her grief.
“I'm sorry,” she told them. “Mommy got some bad news, but it's going to be okay.” She hugged them, gave them love pats, let them crawl into her lap for reassurance. She even managed to dry her tears on the paper towel Tom got her, drank a glass of water, and even tried to smile.
A little while later, while Tom drove the kids to school, she took a shower, washed her tear-streaked face, dressed, and called in sick. Not a complete lie since the emotional storm had left her with a headache and an upset stomach. She’d cried more in the past month than she had her entire life. She didn’t like it.
Three ibuprofen seemed like a good idea. She drank another glass of water, feeling dehydrated as if the tears had drained all the moisture from her.
Finally, she opened the cardboard box and removed the jewelry box. It was covered in gold leaf, the inside lined with rich purple cloth. It held a strand of matched pearls, a diamond and ruby ring that had been her aunt's prized possession, and a palm full of brooches and other costume jewelry.
Attached to the box in a see-through plastic holder was an envelope with her name typed across it. It was a letter from the nursing home director—or at least signed by her.
‘I am sorry to inform you . . .’ it began. It said that her great-aunt had passed away, leaving instructions that the box be delivered to her. The letter assured Storm that they were happy to carry out her aunt's wishes and that they were sorry for her loss.
Storm sat at the edge of her bed, rocking, clutching the letter in one hand, the jewelry box on her lap. It was such a pretty thing: old-fashioned, a little worn, a little fragile. A lot like her aunt.
Regret was a worm that chewed through her heart, leaving holes, hollow tunnels. After agreeing to marry Tom, she had turned her back on her Aunt June. Not a gradual process of one birthday forgotten, one Christmas card not mailed.
No, Storm had wanted a complete break from her past and from everyone who had ever known her as Willow. She had fulfilled that wish, and now she regretted it with every painful breath. Dear Aunt June. She had thrown her out, the baby with the bathwater, the good with the bad. Willow may have been a coward, but she, Storm, was an idiot.
Eventually, Tom returned home.
“Do you want to tell me what other secrets you've been keeping?” he asked, as he stepped into the bedroom
and found her sitting on their bed.
She cradled the jewelry box on her lap.
“My great-aunt died.”
“You told me you had no relatives. I assume from your reaction to this news that not only do you have a relative but that you were close.” Tom's words were clipped, his annoyance palpable.
Storm nodded, unsure of her feelings. Guilt was one of them: anger, sorrow, regret, mourning, nostalgia. She could list them. She just couldn't sort them out. For instance, should she have told Tom she was sorry for holding back a few things when she told him about her father? Or should she stand up, walk calmly into the kitch
en, get the gun out of her purse and make the need for explanations go away? One well placed bullet in the center of his forehead should do it.
She looked up at him, said nothing, and knew that her eyes reflected her dark, unnatural thoughts.
“Do—do you need anything?” he asked.
“Water?” She took the empty glass from the bedside table and held it out to him.
“You got it, honey,” he said. “We'll get through this.”
Storm smiled, or rather she forced the corners of her mouth up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“MAN, I NEED A VACATION,” said Nicky, standing in the door to Storm's office.
“Oh please. You just got back from one. What you want is an early retirement. Like thirty years early.”
“You said it, sister.”
“I have to admit I can't believe our Christmas getaway was just two months ago. It feels like it's been years since I've had any fun.”
“I didn't want to say anything, but you have seemed sort of down lately. Anything you want to share?”
“No, not really. Nothing is going on. Tom and the kids are good. I think it's just the nonstop freaking rain, the gray. I get so sick of it. Why the hell do we live here?”
“The rain”, said Nicky, laughing. “Anyway, the green stuff that comes after the rain and those flowers—you know—that stuff.”
“Yeah, well, flowers don't stop suicide. We have one of the highest rates in the country.”
“Oh boy, you really are a laugh riot today.”
“Sorry. Maybe I just need more coffee.”
“Yep, because as we know, caffeine solves all.” Nicky’s watch beeped, and she looked down at it as if it were sending a message she could read. “Shoot, got court. See you for lunch later this week?”
“Of course. Send me an email, days you're free.”
“Will do. Have a better day, sweetie.” Fluffing the short spikes of her wild pink hair, Nicky turned dramatically and literally skipped down the hall.