Curl Up and Die

by Sophie Sharp

  But when they walked into Murphy’s, the room was full but silent. Mayor Tully’s image and voice carried through the room from the multiple television screens. Detective Moat stood next to him.

  “I am extremely saddened to announce that Nell Jackson is being held in connection with the murder of Veronica Corsello.”

  The room burst out in an uproar. Molly expected fist pumps—a murderer was no longer on the loose. But instead, she saw people, even grown men, turn to each other with sadness and consolation. They were utterly devastated.

  “Not our Nell,” one man said.

  “She is the best person in all of San Cosmas.”

  “If she did this, she had good reason,” a woman said and wiped her eyes.

  “She probably did it to help the truck community.”

  Multiple shows of agreement bounced across the room.

  “I say good riddance to Veronica Corsello.”

  “I’ll start a Kickstarter campaign. We’ll hire her the best lawyer in the country!” the bartender yelled, and everyone cheered.

  The mayor continued, and they quieted. “I assure you, we are doing everything to help Nell. I know you all love her as much as I do.”

  “Look at Detective Moat standing there,” a man with a slurred voice said, “all proud like he isn’t the worst detective in the world.”

  Mia grabbed Molly’s hand. “I want to go.” Mia looked terrified. “I want to go home.”

  It broke Molly’s heart to see her niece so distraught. She’d always been an empath and sensitive to others’ pain, but Molly also couldn’t help but start crying herself because when Mia had said, “I want to go home,” Molly had a bad feeling she really meant Los Angeles this time.

  Mia lay in her loft bed and pulled Henri close. He had a wet patch of fur on the back of his neck from Mia’s tears, but he had put aside his catitude for one day so Mia could cry. By the door was the cardboard box she’d started packing for her move back to L.A. It contained a small stack of books, all she had managed to pack before the tears had started again.

  “I don’t want to go back,” she told Henri. “I like it here. I love being around Aunt Molly and Uncle Doug. I love the new friends I’ve made. But I’ve made such a mess of everything.”

  She’d expected her first year in San Cosmas to be a bumpy transition, but she hadn’t expected to be involved in a murder, to be a suspect, to ruin the life of a woman she had actually liked, and to somehow make the first boyfriend she’d had look at her like something he’d found on the bottom of his shoe. But perhaps worse of all, she’d upset Uncle Doug. He was the closest thing she’d ever had to a father and she had thrown that away too. It was that loss that hurt more than anything.

  Mia was feeling so sorry for herself she almost ignored her phone when it flashed with a text message. She reached for it, assuming it was Aunt Molly checking in on her yet again. But it wasn’t Aunt Molly, it was Damion.

  We have to talk, the text said.

  Mia felt a flutter of hope for the first time that day. Perhaps she and Damion could talk this through, and he would see that she had done the right thing by implicating Nell.

  Come over, she texted.

  Not five minutes later, he stood in the doorway to her studio, as if he’d intended to come over, invited or not.

  “Hi,” Mia said, trying to start off on a friendly foot.

  “Thank you for screwing up my life,” Damion said, in a not-at-all-friendly way.

  “Screwing up your life?” Mia said. “I’m pretty sure you were the one cheating one me.”

  “Cheating?” he said. “Wait, you still believe I was cheating? With Nell?”

  “This ‘project’ thing doesn’t make sense …”

  “She’s my mother, Mia.”

  Mia stared at Damion, trying to make his words make sense, but every way she turned them, they sounded like one more lie. Only Damion looked serious.

  “This is all going to come out now, thanks to you and your aunt. We’d hoped to be a bit more discreet. Nell is my biological mother. She was just a teenager when she got pregnant and she gave me up for adoption. I found her last year and came to San Cosmas to get to know her better.”

  Mia stared at Damion’s features, looking for genetic evidence of this crazy story. Now he mentioned it, he did have Nell’s dark hair and the same heart-shaped face. “Why didn’t you tell me? You didn’t trust me?”

  Damion gave her a look that said he’d have to be an idiot to trust her. “Nell wasn’t ready for her past to come out. She’d been raised by the foster system only to give a baby up for adoption. No one knew. She’s worked hard to get to her position, and she knows how people judge. She was worried this ‘scandal’ of being a pregnant teen would muddy her brand. Plus there was the issue of my father.”

  “The man who bought the necklace,” Mia said, the pieces falling into place.

  “What?” said Damion. “No. The man who bought the necklace is my uncle, my adoptive mom’s brother. I told him about you and your work, and he wanted to do something nice for you.” He laughed. “He and my mom were here to meet Nell and my biological father. That’s why I couldn’t see you so much. I was trying to get my family together.”

  “So, the woman I saw you with in town?”

  “That’s my mom. My adoptive mom.”

  Mia frowned. “But she’s so young.” Mia realized then that she had made some big assumptions about “retired English teachers” and librarians. She’d pictured Damion’s adoptive mother as a sweet older lady, not the youthful single mom she’d seen in town. Mia felt a pang of resentment that Damion hadn’t introduced her to his mom, but now probably wasn’t the best time to bring that up. “I would have liked to have met her,” she said, ignoring her own advice.

  “Well, you would have, if you hadn’t ruined the whole thing. I had a dinner set up with Tabitha. It was supposed to be a surprise.” He shrugged. He didn’t need to add, “But you ruined that too.”

  “All those nights you kept telling me you had things to do …”

  “I was getting to know my family. Nell, my father, his family. I had to be careful not to be seen with them, not until we were ready to go public.”

  “So, your father’s in San Cosmas too?”

  Damion nodded. “I never knew who he was all this time. Turns out he didn’t even know about me, never even knew Nell was pregnant.”

  Mia frowned. In a town as small as San Cosmas, she couldn’t see how Nell could have hidden a pregnancy.

  “Nell moved away for a while,” Damion said, as if reading Mia’s mind. “She came back after my adoption and picked up her life. No one ever knew. Well, almost no one.”

  Mia knew how Damion felt. Lacy, she assumed, knew who Mia’s father was, but she refused to say. Mia understood the hole in Damion’s life and how he’d feel about the chance to fill it. “Oh, Damion,” she said, moving to hug him, wondering if he could forgive her. But he held up his hands to stop her.

  “This isn’t going to work, Mia. Too much damage has been done. I didn’t come here to explain myself. I came to tell you it’s over between us. I just can’t see how we can go forward from here.”

  “You’re breaking up with me?”

  “I think it’s best. Don’t you?”

  Mia nodded, although she didn’t entirely agree, but she could see that the gap between them would be impossible to bridge. They could never trust one another again. Even now, there were things that still didn’t add up.

  “So this was the secret project with Nell.”

  “Partly. That night you and your aunt came barging into Nell’s, we were working on another project.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Really. The Opal May dedication park and youth community center, a place for the entire community, with room for the truckies to set up sometimes.”

  “Oh,” said Mia, feeling worse than ever.

  “It was what my grandmother wanted.”

  “Your grandmother?” M
ia asked.

  “Opal May. Max Harrison is my father.”

  Mia’s jaw fell open as the pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place. Aunt Molly did see Damion on the road to Max’s that day.

  “I’d been trying to get to know him, but then Opal May died and we were all trying to deal with that.”

  “Did Opal May know?”

  He teared up. “Yeah, only a few days, but I got to hold her hand at the end.”

  Mia swallowed hard. She wasn’t sure her heart could take this news, much less imagine how Aunt Molly would feel when she heard it.

  “But you didn’t go to her funeral.”

  “I couldn’t. Publicly, I had no connection to her, and we worried it might create suspicion if I went.”

  “With whom?”

  Damion’s face turned dark. “With Veronica Corsello. She knew Nell and Max from high school. She had suspicions from way back about Nell’s pregnancy, and when she got wind of me, she threatened to ruin Nell’s career.”

  “So she was blackmailing Nell.”

  “Yes. But Nell was going to out herself. She planned to call Corsello’s bluff, go public. She didn’t need to kill her.”

  “But they fought.”

  Damion nodded. “The stress of it all finally got to Nell. Corsello threatened her, and Nell reacted. She shoved her, that’s all. She didn’t kill her.”

  “But someone did.”

  “Yes. And even though I’m sure she deserved it, her dying messed up all our plans. Nell couldn’t go public without making herself, Max, all of us look guilty. And then you came along and ruined everything.”

  Mia said nothing. Damion was right.

  “You ruined my life, Mia. You ruined Nell’s life and Max’s.” He threw up his hands, as if to say he was out of options. And then he turned to leave.

  “I’m sorry,” Mia said, but her words felt hollow. She’d never meant to hurt anyone, but she’d managed to do the opposite.

  “I hope you’re happy,” Damion said.

  But she wasn’t.

  When he was out of sight, Mia added more books to her box. She was out of options too. It was time to go home to her mother.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Molly woke up late on Wednesday morning. She hadn’t been able to sleep. She’d had nightmares about the reaction in the pub. And worse, Doug had slept in another room. They’d never slept apart. She lay in bed for a moment, listening for him moving about the house, but all was quiet. He normally was in a dash to finish getting ready to head to his latest construction site. He’d obviously not woken her up for breakfast.

  She got up and walked around the house, but he was gone. She couldn’t rush him to forgive her, she knew that, but this was worse than she thought. Betrayal is betrayal, and like the advice she had given Anthony, it was going to take time. But she was committed, and she’d start by trying to put their routine life back in order. She loved routine. She had clients to attend to at Glam Van in her favorite location: the lot. Plus, she couldn’t wait to check Facebook for likes and talk to the truckies about their reprieve. She’d let Mia sleep in this morning. That and Molly was avoiding her—she still couldn’t shake Mia’s last words the night before about wanting to go home. Which home? Los Angeles? Please oh please let me be wrong. Molly dashed away tears.

  But by the time she drove up to Glam Van, all of her clients had texted their cancellations. All of them. Had someone found out she turned in Nell? Had Doug been right? Would this get worse before it got better?

  As she climbed the van’s steps, she hated that this was the first time in years that she wasn’t walking in with one of her hubby’s baked treats for clients. Though she wouldn’t have any clients today either.

  She had only just stepped into the lifeless van when her phone rang. It was Detective Moat.

  “Molly, someone has leaked it to the press that you turned Nell in.”

  That explained a few things.

  “I can send over an officer to keep the press and others away,” he said.

  “Others, as in angry others?” Oh my heart. People hate me.

  “I suggest you close shop for the day, and that the two of you lie low.”

  Then and there, her heart sunk to her toes. Mia. They hated Mia too.

  Molly hardly knew what to say and think. Seriously, San Cosmas? Molly had been a child here and had lived here the past two-plus decades. She was as disappointed as any of them that it was Nell, but she hadn’t made Nell kill someone. Murder was not okay, even the murder of a rotten someone like Veronica Corsello.

  At least the detective was grateful to her and Mia. “Thank you, Detective Moat. I’ll do as you suggest. I know the town will come around. They’re just in shock. Eventually they will remember we got a murderer off the streets.”

  “The case is on-going,” he said without the respectful tone she had hoped for. In a very instructive voice he continued. “A person is innocent until proven guilty in the court of law.”

  So far both Doug and Moat had reminded her of that fact.

  She texted Mia: Please stay home and don’t go anywhere. I’ll explain later.

  A second later Molly’s phone rang. Mia sounded like she’d smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for forty years. Her voice was ragged, and Molly knew she’d been crying.

  “What is it?” Molly asked. “What happened?”

  But all Mia managed to say was, “Damion.”

  It took several minutes before her niece could form a complete sentence. When Mia had finished telling Molly everything Damion had told her and sobbing over the breakup, Molly called Doug. She needed her own shoulder to cry on, and Doug had always provided.

  When Doug answered her call on the first ring as usual, Molly took it as a good sign. But when she told him about her call with Moat and having to shut down Glam Van for the first time ever, he only said, “I told you so.”

  Thanks, Doug. Really helpful. She wasn’t about to tell him about Mia’s broken heart, and Mia had asked her not to say anything about Nell and Max. Good thing, really. Molly didn’t need to hear what Doug would say when he heard about the lives they’d wrecked. “Listen,” Molly said, “I am really, really sorry. I can’t change the past. I’m going to close the van and go see Max to apologize about the book.”

  “You certainly have the time today,” Doug said.

  He was right. She did. Sadly. She rang off and made the long drive to Max’s house. She only wished she could hand him the book while she handed him an apology. The poor man had lost his mother and Molly had stolen from him. Even she couldn’t pretend she’d borrowed the registry anymore. She’d been wrong to do it, but she’d done it for a good cause. But now she’d taken so much more from him: Nell, Damion. She wondered what Opal May would think of her now.

  When Max opened the door, Molly was shocked. Mia had told her that Max had looked uncomfortable asking after his book that night at her house, but otherwise, had looked strangely vibrant. But from the looks of him now, he’d lost his soul.

  He didn’t even greet her. He just left the door open and turned, expecting she’d follow him.

  She stepped inside and closed the door. “Max? Are you okay?” It was a dumb question, but she didn’t know what else to say.

  He turned on her, right there in his large marble-floored foyer. “Am I okay?”

  Yeah, clearly he was on a roller coaster of emotions. And unfortunately for her, he was on an angry ride right now. If looks could kill, she’d be dead. She could hardly blame him.

  “I don’t even want to talk to you. Wait here. I have something to give you and then I want you to get out and never come back.”

  Her heart clenched. Opal May’s son never wanted to see her again?

  He came back with an empty and clean casserole dish. The one she had left for him when she’d seen him before.

  “Tell Doug we loved it. It was delicious. Now get out.”

  We?

  “Max, I’m so sorry I took the registry. I
know it was wrong. I was trying to help …”

  But he crumbled right then and there to the first step going upstairs. He covered his face with his hands and sobbed. “I’ve lost everything.”

  Molly couldn’t help herself. She sat her purse and the dish by the door and returned to Max. Sitting next to him on the stairs, she offered him a Kleenex from her purse. The remaining ones from his mom’s funeral.

  He took it and blew his nose. “Nell had a child. Damion. And he’s mine.”

  “I know,” Molly said. And I really don’t like myself too much right now.

  Max didn’t even react to her admission. He just kept talking. “Nell and I dated in high school. I loved her. When I left for college, Veronica, who I thought was a friend to both of us, sought me out. She said that Nell had sent her to break up with me. But the truth was, Veronica was supposed to tell me that Nell was pregnant. That evil woman.”

  “And so you never contacted her,” Molly said, crushed for him and Nell. And, oh man, Damion. “And Nell gave him up for adoption.”

  Molly’s heart ached for Damion, Max, and Nell. Oh, Nell. What a horrible position to be in. Her entire life had been about paying back the community for raising her as an orphan and in turn, she’d had to give a child up for adoption. While one might say that they’d think Nell would never do that after growing up in foster care, Molly could totally see it. Nell would only want the best for her child. And she wouldn’t have given him up for anything less.

  “Did Opal May know?” Molly wasn’t sure if she wanted to know or not. This was the one thing she’d forgotten to ask Mia about her conversation with Damion. Or maybe she’d intentionally avoided it. But now, she wanted to know.

  Max nodded. “She was so happy. Of course, like me, we were devastated at first that Damion and Nell had not been part of our lives the entire time, but we had all decided to move forward. Time was precious. Mother proved that shortly thereafter.”

  “Have you talked to Nell? Do you know what happened with Veronica?”

  “She was at the funeral. She and I had to pretend not to be a unified front. We had to ask Damion not to come to his own grandmother’s funeral. It was just horrible. Nell said she just was so sad that because of her choice and for her career, she had asked us all to keep it quiet until she could figure out how to rebrand her political persona, and then Mother died before we could figure out how to handle the messaging. And sadly, it gave Veronica just enough time to find a way to put the heat on Nell. And she was … she was going to out Nell about being a ‘fraud and a phony,’—her words not ours—and that she was ‘an orphan who created orphans.’”