by Lisa Jackson
He scraped his chair back, then walked to the sink where he tossed what remained in his cup into the sink.
Lithely, she pushed herself onto the counter. “I want to go to the school—Wembley—and ask around about Elizabeth, but I’ll need a ride. Are you taking me ?” Once again, she glanced through the window to the dark skies beyond as he rinsed his cup and left it on the counter. “Tomorrow, I mean. When school’s in session.”
“I haven’t agreed to your plan.”
“Got a better one?” She arched an eyebrow, silently daring him to come up with an alternate idea.
“Maybe.” He gave her the once-over and she thought he was warming to the idea. “You do look like a high school student,” he admitted, drying his hands on a nearby towel. “That could work. Maybe someone will talk to you.” He sounded like he didn’t give it much hope.
Ravinia wasn’t about to give up. “So, I’ll find the oldest teacher, just like you said, and strike up a conversation, tell her I’m Elizabeth’s cousin. No . . . not good enough. Her half sister. Yeah, that’s better. I’m her half sister and we’ve . . . um . . . we’ve lost touch. I have to find her because our father’s dying.” She was proud of herself for the tale she’d woven. It sounded foolproof.
“Her or him,” Rex corrected.
“What?”
“The teacher who’s been at the school the longest. It could be a man.” He tossed the towel aside and sent her an intense look. “You’re pretty quick with the sob stories, you know.”
Was that a compliment? She didn’t think so. “Yeah, well, what’re you doing to find Elizabeth? It’s not like we’ve got a lot of time.” She thought about the sense she had, that evil was on its way. She couldn’t help but worry that she might be the reason that Declan Jr., if the evil was him, had somehow connected to her and had followed her like a wraith to Southern California. Ravinia had traveled all this distance to warn her cousin, to save Elizabeth. Was it possible that she’d read the signs wrong and was, in fact, doing just the opposite, bringing danger with her?
Either way, time was of the essence.
“We need to do something!” she said, her fingers curling over the edge of the counter as Rex opened one of the cupboards, rummaged around and pulled out a box of pasta. When he didn’t respond to her demand, she thought she might have pissed him off. “Okay, sorry,” she apologized as he set the box on the counter next to her. “You’re working on things, I know. But why don’t I go to the school and see if I can find anything out? Or better yet, I’ll talk to the old lady—that Marlena? I want to know more about what she said about Elizabeth and that bridge collapsing.”
“I don’t think she knew any more than she told me.” He was still searching the cabinet, but gave up and let the door close.
“All I’m saying is let me help. Symbiosis,” Ravinia persisted. “Come on, Rex. What have you got to lose?”
“I don’t know. . . .”
“Then let me follow the Cochran woman. You find Elizabeth.”
He was considering it; she was certain. Thoughtfully, he took in all of her, including her T-shirt and jeans, once more.
“I’ll get new clothes. I already said I would.”
He thought about it a moment, his eyes narrowing, then as if he’d made a decision, glanced at his watch. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll take you to South Coast Plaza. Bound to be something there that’ll work for you.”
“So, you’re going to let me help?” She could hardly believe he’d changed his mind.
“I gotta go to LA tomorrow anyway, so we’ll see. Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” he said to her spreading smile, then motioned to the box of pasta resting on the counter. “I got nothing to go with this. So come on. We’ll get something to eat at the mall.”
Driving to Vivian’s house, Elizabeth squinted against the dark sky and flooding rain. Five o’clock and it was pitch dark except for the headlights streaming at her from the cars heading the opposite direction and the tall sodium vapor streetlights that lined the highway. After leaving the office with a stack of paperwork and the knowledge that tomorrow she’d promised to meet Amy, Mazie’s daughter, she’d picked up Chloe and shuttled her into the car. Elizabeth wasn’t sure why Amy wanted to meet with her, what that was all about. Nothing good, as far as she could tell, but maybe she was being too pessimistic. She wished she’d never agreed to attend the group tonight.
She glanced at her daughter in the rearview mirror.
Propped in her car seat, Chloe seemed to be asleep. Her eyes were closed and she was exceedingly quiet for her. She had been for all of the ride.
“Hey, pumpkin. You okay?” Elizabeth asked her.
Chloe didn’t immediately answer and Elizabeth’s heart went to her throat. “Chloe?” she tried again, her voice more strident.
Her daughter’s eyes opened slowly and she stared vaguely straight ahead. Elizabeth could tell she wasn’t completely awake. Worried, she glanced around for a place to pull over. Something wasn’t right.
“Where are we?” Chloe asked.
“We’re almost halfway.”
“To where . . . ?”
They’d gone over the fact they were going to Vivian’s not fifteen minutes earlier.
Elizabeth couldn’t see anywhere to pull over. “To Lissa’s, remember? We talked about this.” Had her daughter just gone to sleep or had she fainted? Was this one of the fainting episodes the teachers at school had called her about? The reason she’d kept Chloe home? “I’ll turn around. Maybe we should just go home.” Or to the doctor.
“No!” Chloe declared, blinking, her voice stronger. “I want to play with Lissa.”
“Were you asleep?”
“You promised I could play with Lissa!”
“I know. Don’t get upset. I’m just concerned that you’re not well, like what happened before.”
“I want to play with Lissa,” she repeated, and even in the dark interior, Elizabeth thought she noticed tears forming in the corners of Chloe’s eyes. “You promised,” her daughter charged.
“Okay. Okay.” Elizabeth braked for a stoplight. With one eye on the glowing taillights of the car in front of her, she said, “I just want to be sure you’re all right.”
“I just had my eyes closed,” Chloe insisted, but Elizabeth suspected she was lying.
“Would you tell me if you didn’t feel well?”
“Yes . . .” Chloe met Elizabeth’s concerned eyes in the mirror, then glanced away, her face set in concentration.
Elizabeth’s stomach knotted.
The light changed and she eased onto the gas, following the car while still glancing in the rearview to her daughter.
Chloe said almost inaudibly, “I thought I saw Daddy . . .”
“Daddy . . . ?” Elizabeth’s throat tightened. “You mean you were dreaming?”
“He’s mad because we killed him.”
“What? Chloe, my God. We didn’t kill him,” she choked out nearly ramming into the back of the car she’d been following. Her Escape started to fishtail, then caught, staying miraculously in her lane. “That’s not right, honey.” Her conscience asked, Didn’t you? With your thoughts, didn’t you wish him dead and somehow cause the accident that took his and Whitney Bellhard’s lives?
“I was mad at him,” Chloe admitted in a small voice, tucking her chin into her neck. “I didn’t like that woman touching him.”
Elizabeth’s mouth went dry. “What woman?” Her hands were suddenly slick with sweat on the steering wheel. What was this? Had her little girl somehow seen Court with Whitney Bellhard? Had Court allowed it? For the love of God! Or was this all in her daughter’s mind? The product of a vivid imagination and all the gossip she might have heard?
“They were in Daddy’s car. She had her hand on his leg. I yelled at her to let go, but she never heard me. I’m still mad at him,” Chloe added, her voice dropping to a whisper.
When? When had Chloe been with Court and Whitney, if, indeed she was the w
oman? Was it true? Or a fantasy? What, if anything, did it have to do with Chloe’s “spells” where she seemed out of it for minutes at a time? And the fainting spell, according to her teacher, the reason Elizabeth had kept her home from school.
Dread settled into her heart. What was wrong with her child? She had to find out. First from a medical doctor, then a child psychologist or—
“Damn,” she whispered under her breath. Elizabeth was so rattled she nearly missed the turn-off to Vivian’s neighborhood. Wrenching the wheel hard at the last minute, she made the corner, then told herself to calm down. She would deal with whatever was going on with Chloe.
Another glance in the rearview showed nothing out of the ordinary. As she drove upward past McMansions with wrought-iron gates and manicured lawns, the street winding to the crest of a hill that housed the neighborhood park, Chloe was doodling on the condensation of the window, once again blithely unconcerned about anything.
Elizabeth nosed the car downward to the street leading to the Eachuses huge home with its sculpted landscaping and exterior lights burning bright in the night.
Pulling into the drive, she switched off the ignition and yanked on the emergency brake before swiveling in her seat to regard her daughter. Rain pounded onto the roof and she had to raise her voice to be heard. “Honey? When you fainted before, those other times? At school? Do you remember?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you have dreams then, too?”
Chloe stared at Elizabeth through the darkness, then nodded slowly.
“What were they about?” Elizabeth could scarcely form the words, her throat was so dry. And her heart was pounding painfully in her chest.
“He said he loved you, but I think he did some bad things.”
“Your . . . daddy?”
Chloe hiked her shoulders to her ears. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“I’m just worried that—”
”We’re here!” she cut her mother off as she quickly unbuckled her seat belt.
“Chloe, wait!”
“No,” she declared, throwing open the door and running through the swirls of windblown rain across the wet grass toward the massive front door.
Elizabeth scrambled after her. She caught up with her daughter at the porch, but Chloe had already pounded on the bell seconds before Lissa opened the door.
“Wait!” Elizabeth said again.
Chloe shot inside like a bullet.
Elizabeth opened her mouth to call her daughter back, but the two girls were already pounding up the stairs as she entered the foyer, the shoulders of her jacket wet, her skirt actually dripping. The moment for a heart-to-heart with her daughter had passed, she realized. She’d have to continue the conversation later, when she and Chloe were alone again.
Vivian, dressed in one of her ubiquitous jogging suits, appeared from the direction of the kitchen. “Ready?” She stopped by the coat closet where she grabbed a longer jacket and umbrella. “God, it’s nasty out there. I hate this weather.”
“Me, too,” Elizabeth admitted.
“We’ll deal. Bye, honey!” she sang up the stairs to her daughter, then toward the kitchen, “Bill, you’re on! See you later.” As she reached for the doorknob, she said, to Elizabeth, “Let’s go, before someone decides they need me.”
Outside, Vivian and Elizabeth ducked their heads against the rain as, unlike Chloe, they took the sidewalk to Elizabeth’s Escape.
“I’m going to have to make it a quick night,” Elizabeth told her as Vivian buckled herself into the passenger seat. Starting the engine and pulling into the street, she explained about Chloe falling asleep in the car, omitting what she’d said about her dream. “The kid’s just beat, so I’ll need to get her home.”
As she drove, she sensed that Vivian wanted to argue, but those protests died in her throat. Instead, she directed Elizabeth two exits south on the 405, then to a commercial building whose back offices had obviously been converted from storage to a community room for rent. Elizabeth found an empty parking spot and she and Vivian dashed through the rain and the parked cars.
Once inside the room with its tile floor and suspended fluorescent lights, Elizabeth took a seat in the semicircle of chairs, but felt dissociated from the other women. The group called themselves Sisterhood, though Vivian had explained it was a loose term without any registered name or number.
The meeting opened with a woman named Judy greeting them as a group. Tall and thin with a sprig of red hair, she wore little makeup, jeans, and a comfy sweatshirt. After the mass greeting, she launched into a humorous story about how, in the rain, a little girl in her neighborhood had been trying to sell lemonade from a stand in front of her house. Everyone chuckled, but Elizabeth’s mind was on Chloe and the disturbing things she’d said. How had she known about Court and Whitney Bellhard? Or, was that just coincidence?
He’s mad because we killed him. . . .
The mood in the room grew sober and one woman and then a second began talking about how they were coping with their problems from loss or misery or death—whatever reason had sent them to Sisterhood in the first place.
He said he loved you but I think he did some bad things....
“I don’t care. I just can’t forgive him,” the second woman—her name tag read STELLA—declared. She told the story of a cheating husband who’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She finished with, “I’m sorry. I’ll say it. I wish he’d just die.”
Elizabeth’s attention returned with a bang. Her throat tightened and she felt suddenly hot. This woman could be echoing thoughts she’d had before Court actually died.
Judy soothed, “You wouldn’t be the first woman to express those feelings, Stella.” A soft chorus of agreement followed.
“I don’t think it’s my duty to take care of him now,” Stella continued, her fists clenched, her voice shredded with tears. “Why should I get that job? Call me a bitch. Go ahead. I’m not spending the next few years of my life taking care of that loser!”
She still cares about him, Elizabeth realized, her heart breaking a little for the woman’s obvious pain. For a second, she looked inward. Do I still care about Court? When she thought about him, guilt was the most consuming emotion. Guilt for wishing him dead. Anger, too, still simmered in her heart; she was still furious about the way he’d left her and left his daughter. It had been wrong. Heartless. Of course she missed him and felt his loss, for certain, but was that just because she was feeling rudderless without him?
You’re putting too fine a point on it. You’re sorry he’s gone. Accept that and stop trying to make yourself out to be some kind of monster. You wished him dead, but really you just wanted the pain he’d caused you to end.
She looked around and asked Vivian in a whisper, “How often does Nadia come?”
Vivian leaned in close. “She doesn’t anymore. I think she felt kind of like a fraud because her grief was different, you know, with the miscarriages. They happened pretty early in the pregnancies, so she didn’t have a child or husband or family member that she could name.”
“Ah . . .”
The meeting went on and a woman named Char spoke about how long it had been since her son and husband had died in an automobile accident. Elizabeth’s head started to pound as she realized the depth of pain experienced by the women at the meeting. Their feelings were raw, their despair and grief palpable, tears flowing in some cases. Words of consolation and understanding were whispered throughout the room.
Like Nadia, Elizabeth felt a bit of a fraud for being here when her own feelings were so conflicted.
The discussion went from one person to the next and when it was her turn, Elizabeth shook her head as she’d seen a number of the women do. She wasn’t ready to open up to these strangers about her feelings or her family. Instead, her fingers curled over her skirt and she bit hard on her lip. It was a mistake coming here. She was more certain than ever.
Unlike Elizabeth, Vivian was eager to take the f
loor. She spoke about her Carrie, how difficult that first year had been after her death, and how, even though she had Lissa, Carrie was with her every day. The others nodded in commiseration, and Stella, the woman who’d wished her husband dead, wiped a few angry tears away as she was still lost in her own misery.
The meeting wrapped up about nine and Elizabeth slowly let out a breath, relieved that the evening was over. Grabbing her purse and foraging inside for her keys, she didn’t know what she felt more, a need to get away from all this depression or the desire to see her daughter again and scoop her into her arms, make sure she was all right. The last few weeks had been terrible, but she still had Chloe and that was worth everything. Everything.
Gratefully, Vivian didn’t want to linger.
When she dropped Vivian off at the Eachuses house and picked up Chloe, Elizabeth learned that Chloe and Lissa had been in yet another fight. The girls were watching television in separate rooms, Chloe in the family room with Bill, Lissa in the master bedroom.
A frazzled Bill made a face, spread his hands, and declared, “Babysitting’s hard,” to which Vivian rolled her eyes even while she told him he’d done fine. “And honey,” she reminded him gently, “it’s really not babysitting when it’s your own child.” Turning toward Elizabeth, Vivian mouthed, “Men!” as if she couldn’t believe how clueless they, and Bill in particular, were.
“Thanks,” Elizabeth told him and ushered her daughter to the car.
Elizabeth tried to talk to Chloe on the way home, but it was impossible. Chloe was tired, grumpy, and uncommunicative. When Elizabeth attempted to return to the conversation they’d begun in the car on the way to Vivian’s, about the woman Chloe had claimed to have seen touching Court’s leg in his BMW, Chloe shut down completely.
“I don’t wanna talk!” she practically screamed, turning her face away from Elizabeth to stare out the window of the backseat.
Once home, Chloe went straight to bed without a complaint, even running a toothbrush over her teeth without having to be reminded.
Elizabeth was left alone with her thoughts and worries. She slipped out of her clothes and into a robe, then washed the makeup from her face and applied a cool, soothing cream, telling herself she needed to ignore the concerns crowding and scratching at her brain.