Hunger won the day.
I padded my way softly down the hall. Loud laughter seem to fill the entire lodge. Maybe they wouldn’t notice me if I walked really—
“Erica! Honey!” my mom’s voice called out.
I turned to look at the room full of women in pajamas holding mugs of tea.
“We missed you today! We weren’t able to do our regular therapy exercises because you weren’t there,” she said with the slightest bit of strain in her voice. She also darted her eyes, not very subtly, over to the insurance agent, Lydia Morgan, who didn’t seem to notice anything but the muffin in her hand.
“I am so sorry,” I said. “I…” Think, Erica. Think. I shot my mother yet another look to remind her of how much I hated being put in this position. She just smiled. I inhaled deeply and pushed my shoulders back. “I had a pretty bad allergy attack, and … I had to get some medicine! Antihistamines. Knocked me right out.” I tried faking a sneeze but ended up spitting on myself.
All the women were still looking at me as though they were expecting more.
“But,” I said with what I hoped was a reassuring nod. “I did spend some time last night—hours in fact—going over some exercises we might try to, uh, relieve some of the pressure from all of our unresolved feelings.” As soon as the words were out, I felt my lungs deflate. Had I just said exercises? I didn’t have any exercises! I—
“Yes, I got your notes, darling! We’re going to try out all those exercises tonight! We were just waiting for you!” My mother swung her arms widely, embracing the room.
“Great!” I said, finally able to breathe again. “Great.”
I guess my great wasn’t all too convincing, because someone said, “I know what’s going on here.”
The voice came from Maria Franelli standing by the fireplace in her leopard-print pajamas. The way she was swinging her mug about made me think she’d found Kit Kat and Tweety’s gin.
“You do?” I asked quickly. I looked over to my mother, who stood frozen by an armchair, before switching my gaze to Lydia Morgan, who had stopped eating her muffin and was now paying close attention to the woman with the shellacked hair.
“You,” she said, pointing a finger first at me then at my mother, “have mother-daughter issues.”
My mom said, “Nonsense,” at the exact same moment I said, “Absolutely.”
The women froze before dissolving into laughter.
“Ah, well,” my mother said, clapping her hands together. “You have caught us.” She hung her head dramatically before swinging it back up. “Is there any relationship more complicated than that of mother and daughter?”
The women all nodded their heads in agreement while my eyes rolled violently.
“Even my daughter, a brilliant psychologist in her own right, can’t help but roll her eyes when her mother speaks.”
All the women turned to look at me again. I smiled, but the corners of my mouth felt like they weighed about a hundred pounds.
“But ladies, this week is about you!” my mother announced, grabbing back their attention. “Don’t let our foibles get in the way. Erica and I are professionals. Let’s turn our attention to you and your healing,” she said, smiling and nodding at each one. “Erica, honey, sit down.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said through my faltering smile. “I’m going to get something to eat.”
I walked into the kitchen listening to a woman behind me mutter, “My daughter is exactly the same way.”
I grumbled my way over to a drawer and yanked it open before I realized I wasn’t alone.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” a cheerful voice said.
I turned to see a woman about my age pouring water from the kettle into a mug. “I was just getting some … some…” She turned a package over in her hand. “Vegan berry soul rejuvenation tea.” She put the package down. “Then I have to find Kit Kat’s tonic.”
“Tonic?” I replied, taking in the woman in front of me. She was petite and pretty, with just-styled blond hair and dimples. I doubted she had a frog-themed room growing up.
“You must be Erica. I’m Candace,” she said, stepping forward, big smile on her face. “I’m trying really hard not to hug you right now, but I feel like I already know you.”
I blinked my eyes a few times.
She gave me a hopeful smile. “Unless you’re a hugger too?”
I laughed and took a step back.
Candace? How did I know that name? My brain flashed to my earlier conversation with Freddie. “Oh, Candace. The PR person for the developer.”
“That’s me, the one and only, working for the evil developer threatening to destroy Otter Lake.” She bared her teeth and growled cutely. “I left my tail and horns back in town though.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t think they make them in your size.” I shut the drawer I had opened and eyed the fridge. “You’re not here for the ‘We hath mo’ healing’ session, are you?”
“Oh, no. More like community outreach.” She popped a piece of something into her mouth then turned back to the cupboard. “And the muffins. Your mom makes really great muffins.” She rummaged around in the cupboards with a level of familiarity that made me frown. “Oh, this must be what Kit Kat was talking about,” she said, pulling out an unlabeled bottle with clear liquid in it. “Some natural-medicine thing. She said it helps with her knees.”
“I bet it does.” Leave it to Kit Kat and Tweety to keep a stash in my mom’s kitchen. I pulled open the fridge and spotted some breaded chicken on a plate under plastic wrap. “So I guess Otter Lake hasn’t exactly rolled out the welcome mat for you,” I said loudly, head still in the fridge.
I heard a sigh. “Actually, the people here are great. It’s the job that’s killing me.” I turned around, chicken in hand, to see Candace lean against the counter. “Don’t get me wrong. The money’s terrific, and there are worse places to spend the summer, but this job is impossible … on both ends.”
“Really?” I popped a piece of chicken in my mouth and forced myself to lean against the counter, mirroring Candace. Ever since my conversation with Freddie, I had a burning desire to prove that I could make friends. I liked people … generally speaking. Even if they were blond huggers. “Why both ends?”
“Well, the people of Otter Lake don’t want change. And my boss, well, he seems to think I can gentrify this place all by myself. The buyers we’re trying to attract are families from the city, and, when they look around, all they see are hillbillies with banjos.”
My mouth froze. Otter Lake was kind of like an annoying little brother or sister. Which meant it was fine for me to pick on it, but anybody else? That was an entirely different story.
“I don’t see it that way,” she said, holding up her palms, “but the people the development is targeting do. And now with poor Dickie falling down a well.” Her eyes sadly blinked their way to mine. “Did you know him?”
I shrugged, but my frown deepened. Candace, here, didn’t seem to realize that she was the outsider, not me.
“What will the Musketeers do without one of their members?”
I choked a little on my chicken. Suddenly I was feeling kind of silly for calling them Fluffateers myself. We were all adults. “You know it isn’t really Musketeers. It’s—”
She held up a hand. “Oh! Stop right there. I’m not much of a swearer,” she said, wrinkling her nose with a smile.
Huh, maybe I needed to start my whole liking-people kick with someone a little easier.
“Anyway, it’s a tragedy, and my boss thinks nobody is going to buy out here until the locals have all been cleaned up, or better yet, moved out.”
“And that’s not going to happen,” I said, taking another bite of chicken. Laurie Day sure knew how to tenderize a piece of meat.
“Exactly. It’s impossible. That and the snapping turtles.”
“Snapping turtles?” I mumbled through my chicken-filled mouth.
“Do you have any idea how many snapping turtle
s there are in Otter Lake?” She suddenly moved toward me and grabbed a piece of chicken off my plate. I would have stabbed her hand with my fork, if I had been using one.
“Sorry. I’m a sharer. You don’t mind, do you?”
I couldn’t think of a single appropriate thing to say.
“Are you okay?” she asked, pointing to my face with the fingers holding my chicken. “Your cheek is twitching.”
I nodded.
“Anyway, there are so many turtles. And they scare the helicopter moms. I don’t blame them. Baby toes are so precious,” she said through the hand that was covering her mouth. “I sound completely crazy, don’t I?”
I unclenched my jaw. “Not at all.”
“Mmm, that was really good.”
I moved my plate safely to the counter behind me.
“So how long are you here for, Erica?”
“Just a few more days.”
She pulled a phone out of her pocket. “We have to hang out,” she said. “What’s your number?”
A strangled sound escaped my throat.
“What about tonight? We could head over to the Dawg! Oh, wait … I can’t tonight,” she said, still poking at her phone. A new kind of smile spread over her face. “I’m meeting somebody for drinks.”
“Really?” I asked. My mind shuffled through all of the available men in Otter Lake. It was bound to be someone I knew. “Who?”
“Grady Forrester,” she said, looking up at me. “Do you know him?”
* * *
Candace excused herself shortly thereafter, and I spent the next hour and a half in a fog. My mother, always the survivor, put a pen and notepad in my lap, and I tried really, really hard to play the role of a therapist deep in thought, but the women’s stories blew right over my head.
Candace was having drinks with Grady.
Drinks.
With Grady.
It was stupid. I shouldn’t care. I mean, it had been a long time. Grady probably had had lots of drinks with lots of Candaces. Probably some Melissas too. Maybe even some Tiffanys.
I moved my pen randomly over the pad on my lap.
It was none of my business if he went on dates with dimpled PR girls. And what was with those dimples? They were big enough to serve soup in. I looked down at my notepad. Huh, and was that a picture of a dimpled woman swimming from a snapping turtle? I grabbed the pen and quickly scribbled over my doodle before getting to my feet. I needed a break.
“Erica, darling. Where are you going?” my mother asked sweetly while stepping around an invisible box of pain belonging to Susan Anderson, the woman who cried every day. She was miming her prison of sorrow.
“I need a breath of fresh air … and, and to think about individualized treatment plans.”
“Of course. You’ll be right back? We’re all anxious to hear your thoughts.” she said, clasping her hands ever so sweetly to her chest.
I clasped my hands so tightly my knuckles cracked. “Righto.”
The screen door banged behind me as I stepped onto the dark porch. I walked over to the railing and took a deep breath.
“I can do this,” I whispered softly.
Saying the words out loud actually felt kind of good. Maybe everything my mom taught wasn’t hooey.
“I can do this,” I said a little more loudly.
Huh, it felt even better louder.
“I can do this!” I yelled into the night sky.
“She’s losing it,” a voice behind me said.
“Wah!” I spun around, bracing myself on the bannister.
Kit Kat and Tweety, white hair glowing in the dark, clunked their mugs together before taking long sips.
“Nice,” I muttered. “You two need bells on those mugs, so people know when you’re around.”
“Then we’d miss all the good stuff,” Tweety said. “‘I can do this,’” she mimicked, holding her cup in the air while her sister laughed. “Priceless.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I see Candace fetched your medicine.”
“Great girl that Candace. Knows how to respect her elders.”
“Yeah, she tells me your knees are acting up.”
“They are when someone else is willing to make a kitchen run,” she said, again clinking mugs with her sister. She then patted the bench beside her. “Come sit. You don’t really want to go back in there, do you?” She jerked her thumb to the window glowing with yellow light behind her. It looked like all the women were miming now, smashing their fists at Susan Anderson’s invisible walls. One might have been swinging a pickax.
“Nope,” I said, taking a seat.
We sat for a few moments in silence.
Tweety cleared her throat. “So, Erica, how—”
“So not only does my mother have me committing insurance fraud, but I drove off with my boat still tied to a dock today, tearing off a big chunk of said dock in front of Grady Forrester, no less, who is going out for drinks,” I said, making big air quotes around drinks, “with your great girl, Candace, who has totally obnoxious dimples … all … ALL after finding the dead body of a guy I knew back in high school, but didn’t particularly like, which is making me feel kind of guilty and traumatized all at the same time. That’s how I am!” I said, flopping back on the bench.
Neither twin said anything for a moment.
“I was going to ask how long you were staying.”
I threw my hands into the air then let them drop back onto my lap. “A few more days. Till the end of the retreat.”
The twins nodded.
We sat in silence again.
This time it was Tweety who broke the silence. “So, why—”
“Why does my mother do the things that she does?” I asked, nodding quickly. “I don’t know. You tell me.” I jumped to my feet. “I mean I know she loves me, but she doesn’t exactly make things easy for me. And then she complains when I don’t come to visit. If you were me, would you visit my mother?” I didn’t give them time to answer. “No, you wouldn’t. No sane person would!”
“I was going to say why—”
“Why does my mother teach honesty and authenticity, yet refuses to practice it in her own life?” I asked, nodding angrily. “Did you know that my mother has never even told me who my father is? Refuses to even discuss it. Says it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter! She probably doesn’t know. That’s my guess. I was probably conceived with the moon and stars!”
“Erica, honey, keep it together.”
“I mean, why does anyone behave the way they do? Why does Grady Forrester charm ladies only to break their hearts? Why does he try to mount somebody’s boat one minute only to take someone else out for drinks the next?”
“I was going to say—”
“Oh, stop right there,” I said, pointing at Tweety or maybe it was Kit Kat. It was hard to tell in the dark. “I know your routine. I’m spilling my guts and you’re going to say something like I was just going to ask why don’t I take the four o’clock bus into the city instead of the eight-thirty, or something else to make me look like I’m freaking hysterical!”
Tweety cleared her throat. “Actually, I was going to say, why are you letting everyone push you around?”
“I was going to say the bus thing,” Kit Kat muttered over her mug.
I stood frozen for a moment, derailed from my rant. “I don’t let everyone push me around. In fact, I’m known for standing up for other p—” Something big and furry hit me in the back of the leg. I stumbled forward. I turned back to see Caesar standing where I had stood just a few seconds ago, licking his paw.
A little gin sprayed from Kit Kat’s lips.
“Okay, morbidly obese cats notwithstanding, I do not let people push me around. This is not me,” I said, waving my arms around in the air. “I have a life back in Chicago. I—”
“Ran away.”
“I did not run away!”
“You ran away because you couldn’t … what does her mother call it when she’s talking to those wo
men who still do their ex-husbands’ laundry?” Tweety said, looking to Kit Kat.
“Boundaries.”
“Boundaries!” she said, turning back to me. “You couldn’t put boundaries up around your mother.”
“Putting boundaries around my mother is like putting boundaries around air,” I said. “But—”
“Yeah, you don’t manage your emotions very well. Like the night at the Raspberry Social,” Kit Kat said. “Although it was pretty great when you started screaming, You want a show! I’ll give you a show! Let me introduce you to my little friend!”
“I did not say, Let me introduce you to my little friend. Where do you people keep getting this stuff?”
The twins shrugged in identical motions.
I once again folded my arms over my chest. “You guys don’t know what you’re talking about.” I turned away from them and slapped my hands down on the rough wood of the railing. “Unbelievable,” I muttered. “First, there’s Freddie saying I have people issues. Now you—”
“Oh, yeah, that too,” said Tweety, raising her voice to my turned back. “People issues. You should explore that. That’s good.”
I shot a glare over my shoulder.
“How many of my mother’s sessions have you been to?”
“It’s been nearly thirty years. Some of it ain’t bad. Hilarious, but not bad.”
“Well, thank you, Drs. Freud and Jung, for your brilliant slapdash analysis. I’m sure it will change my life.”
“Now you’re … what’s it called?” Tweety snapped her geriatric fingers. “Regressing.”
I made a face at her before saying, “And I will have you know, I don’t have any issues back in Chicago. So maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s all you crazy people.”
Tweety shook her head. “Nah.”
“Hey, quiet down,” Kit Kat whispered. “What’s going on over there?”
I followed her crooked finger. Over at the crest of the hill at the top of the stairs stood two people, a man and a woman. A shot of fear zinged through me before I realized the woman was Laurie Day and the man, well, by the toss of the hair, the man had to be Harry.
Skinny Dipping with Murder Page 6