Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
THE VARIABLES
Shelbi Wescott
Copyright © 2014 Shelbi Wescott
All rights reserved.
Books One and Two of this trilogy were dedicated to my amazing, creative, funny, intelligent, joyful, sensitive, and freaking fabulous children. So, I asked them who they wanted me to dedicate Book Three to, and here is what they said:
Elliott said:
Toni — “She’ll just love it! Because she loves books and reading and Virulent…”
Ike said:
“I choose mommy.”
I replied, “Mommy isn’t going to dedicate this book to herself.”
He thoughtfully responded, “Okay. Then…Mike.”
So this book is dedicated to:
Toni and Mike
PROLOGUE
25 Years before The Release
Blair walked forward, the plastic on the store-bought bouquet crinkling against her green and white polka-dotted dress. She was wearing a scratchy petticoat underneath like she was dressed for Easter Sunday service. Her polished saddle shoes collected dew, and blades of grass clung to the heel; her socks were folded perfectly against her thin ankles. At her mother’s command, she placed the collection of pink daisies, yellow mums, blue zinnias, and orange lilies at the base of the pearl white granite headstone.
Josephine Truman had labored over whether or not she wanted rose vines or ivy sculpted across the top of the cemetery marker (she went with ivy) and the exact color of the etching (deep gray against the light colored stone). Still, though, Josephine had often wondered if Kymberlin would have approved of the extravagance. Their oldest child: forever stuck at nineteen. Toothy, thick blonde hair, a light café au lait birthmark on her right arm—impetuous, sensitive, brilliant. Trusting. She was now relegated to a list of adjectives and memories. And even those were fading daily.
What did she smell like as a baby? Could anyone remember her giggle? Her first crush was a neighbor boy named James Striklin; she used to ask for a dog at least four times a week and whistle “Oh, Suzanna” while doing chores. She cried when she received a failing grade on her first high school essay. Her favorite present was a small metal microscope and a box of glass slides.
These were the things they would remember forever.
Blair ran back and tucked herself between her dad’s legs. She clung to him, grimly aware, even at three years old, that something was different about today. Huck reached down and mussed her hair, but Josephine tsked and smoothed the fine blonde strands back into place.
“The cameras—” she complained.
Huck bent to the ground and ran his hand across the grass. A chill ran up his spine and he drew in a quick breath. It had been nearly four years since they had buried his oldest daughter and yet the grass still remained a different shade of green in a perfect rectangle. Like a beacon announcing: this is where we dug a hole. This is where we put her in the ground. He hated those slight variants of color, hated how it helped him imagine her beneath him.
“To hell with the cameras,” he said to his wife.
Gordy kicked his toe against the earth and wandered away from his family. Huck opened his mouth as if he wanted to stop him, but Josephine waved him away.
“Let him go. Boys should wander. It’s their right.”
“How can you say that?” Huck asked. He reached down and pulled up Blair into him. He gave her a tight squeeze. “After everything...”
“We’ll lose him one way or another,” Josephine sighed, and she watched as her twenty-one year-old son disappeared out of sight behind a collection of trees and shrubs. “Girls you get to hold on to. It’s the boys you raise to lose.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Huck continued, but Josephine shot him a silencing glare. “Your negativity is an issue, Jo. Good thoughts. Positivity. Today, of all days, can you please hold yourself together?”
Their conversations had become clichéd and terse. They strung along words and phrases that vacillated between trying to help and trying to hurt when their own pain didn’t feel sharp enough.
Blair trembled against her father, her eyes shifting between her parents. “I’m cold,” the child said and Huck rubbed her arms over the growing goose bumps.
“They didn’t look at us,” Josephine whispered. “Once. When they filed out. But I saw that one...the woman, with the red streak in her hair, always taking notes. I saw her look at him and smile, a soft smile. Warm. A warm smile, Huck! To him! When Kymmy’s friends took the stand? That man...the big one, in the back? He rolled his eyes. I saw it. I saw it! They’ve made up their minds, Huck, and when you figure that out, it will be too late. Our girl is gone and there’s no justice in this world. None. Throw away your empty optimism and embrace the fact that we have lost...seeing your disappointment will be too hard to bear.”
Huck spun, the bright flowers in his periphery. “Shut up,” he spat. “Don’t you dare...don’t you dare poison this with your toxicity.”
Josephine took a bold step forward and stuck her finger in Huck’s face. Her arm was shaking. She opened and closed her mouth like a fish while she contemplated her response, her chest rising and falling in anger. Then she let her hand fall to her side and her shoulders slouch forward.
“She’s never coming back.”
“I can still want justice,” Huck said. He bent down and picked up his youngest child and held her in his arms. Blair rested her head on her father’s shoulder. She brought a hand up and ran it through his dark hair greying at the temples. His body had aged a decade in the past four years. From the moment Kymberlin’s body was discovered, naked in the woods, covered loosely with dried leaves, her skin and fingernails scrubbed clean, her eyes left open, Huck watched his own eyes set deeper in his sockets and deep lines etch in broad strokes across his forehead.
From behind them, someone stirred. Their driver took a tentative step forward and cleared his throat and motioned to the town car, which was idling on the gravel drive. “On the radio...I just heard...it’s time.”
Huck and Josephine turned to him, their faces ashen. Josephine looked like she was going to be sick.
“Gordon!” Josephine called without looking. “Gordon! Get back here!” Her voice rose. Here here here echoed through the trees. “Oh, Huck,” she whispered, and she sucked in the air through her teeth. “I’m scared.”
He trudged forward through the grass and reached for the handle of the car.
“I’m not,” he nodded with a tense smile. “Short deliberation is in our favor.” Huck looked back at his daughter’s final resting place. He blew a kiss in the direction of the headstone and ducked into the waiting car.
No one bothered to turn on the overhead lights. A single desk lamp illuminated Huck’s desk, his sprawling blueprints and stacks of paper. He tapped a pen against his temple and mumbled to himself while Bobby Darin crooned “Beyond the Sea” in the background. Blair, still dressed in her polka dots, had fallen asleep across the cushions of the front den’s leather couch, one foot dangling off the side. Her brother sat with his back against the front of the same couch, his head resting in his hands. Maybe he had drifted off to sleep, too, with an empty whisky tumbler turned over by his side, a melting ice cube creeping toward the edge.
Someone knocked on the door.
Gordon’s head shot up. He looked to his dad and then to his sleeping sister. “Are we answering it?” he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Huck didn’t reply.
“Dad?” Gordon called, a little louder. “Dad?” But Huck hunched over his paperwork, picking up one piece and then another, oblivious to his son’s voice or the knocking. “Dad!”
He turned, his red-rimmed eyes catching in the light.
“If you care about who is at the door...then answer the damn door,” Huck replied. Then he stared, unmoving, as Gordon hesitated and finally rose, wiping his hands on his pants as he walked.
Keeping the chain lock in place, Gordon unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door just a few inches. He looked out into the hallway at a tall man with sunken shoulders, his tie unknotted around his neck, hair disheveled.
“You’ve been drinking, too?” Gordon asked, still peering, his voice raspy from sleep.
The man gave a non-committal shrug. Gordon sighed and shut the door, slid the chain free, and then opened the door wide. The visitor squeezed Gordon’s shoulder as he walked past, making a beeline to Huck.
“You don’t have any lights for this place?” the man asked.
No one answered him.
“Maybe,” Huck said after a long moment, “you should have called before coming here.”
“We didn’t get to talk at the courthouse, about options, and for me to say how sorry...”
Huck put up a hand. He turned to the man, his face flat, expressionless. “Save your sorry. You’ll need them in bulk when the other teenagers turn up dead. Their fathers are going to want to know how a man who kidnapped a college student in broad daylight and strangled her in his apartment, and then transported her to a well-traveled park...was able to walk out and see the sun today. Smell the rain coming in. Feel freedom. He felt it, on his skin, seeping into his pores. Freedom that he doesn’t deserve, that’s for sure. So, no, no—no sorry for me.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Save the sorry. Save them all.” Then Huck turned back to his desk. “Do you know what next week is?”
The man swallowed loudly. Gordon resumed his place on the ground; he didn’t take his eyes off his father, even as the man looked to Gordon for reassurance.
“Huck—”
Huck drummed his fingers against the wood. “My question. Answer my question. In all those copious amounts of notes you needed...you have it written down?” He then wielded his pen in the direction of the man. “You must have it written down.”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. God. Seriously, can we turn some lights on in here?” The man reached for the wall light, but Gordon coughed and Huck spun, lifting his pen as a weapon.
“Tsk, tsk,” Huck said. He waved the pen like a metronome keeping the beat. “I saw the date...bright and clear today on my daughter’s headstone. Her birthday, Harris. Next week would have been Kymberlin’s twenty-third birthday.”
Harris didn’t reply. Then he opened his mouth into a long drawn out oh and closed his eyes.
On the stereo, Darin’s voice repeated sailin’, sailin’, sailin’ as the song hummed its ending. Then after three long seconds of silence, the track picked back up at the beginning. Harris turned toward the music, but kept a poker face.
“I should have remembered, Huck. Really, I should have.”
“You failed us.” Huck took a step forward and then leaned in, poking the tip of his pen into Harris’s tie. “The jury failed us. Failure, failure everywhere.” He looked wildly between his visitor and his son and then his sleeping daughter. He paused and examined his pen against the green and white fabric of the tie, an inkblot spreading, and withdrew it with a swift motion. “Not again.”
Harris put his hands up. “Huck, listen, friend. I mean this without offense, because I know what you’ve been through today...but if you’re planning on doing anything...extreme...I can’t let you. I’ll have to report you. We’ve been friends longer than this trial...I’m going to help you...”
Retreating to his work, Huck didn’t answer. Then he slipped a piece of paper out from a single stack and held it to the light. “A-ha,” he said, pleased with himself. “Found it.” He flicked his finger against the middle and the paper wobbled in his hands. “Goodbye, Harris,” he said, and he walked to the door and opened it wide.
“Huck,” the man pleaded. He remained rooted to the floor. Then he looked around the room, and his eyes settled on the fully dressed Blair and the disheveled Gordon as if for the first time. He lowered his voice to a whisper and took three large strides over to his friend. “Okay, okay. I can call in some favors. Some people...from back in the day, they can help with these kinds of things.”
“Please,” Huck interrupted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Leave before you embarrass yourself.”
“You always knew that was on the table—”
“Stop.”
“Where’s Josephine, Huck?” Harris asked, and Huck narrowed his eyes, his hands remaining fixed on the open door. When no one answered, Harris took a step back toward the middle of the condo. “Let me just talk to Josephine before I go, okay?”
Gordy stretched his legs out in front of himself and yawned with an exaggerated flair.
“She’s on the roof. With a bottle of wine. And that’s where she wants to be right now...so leave her be,” Huck replied.
“Oh, now.” Harris ran his fingers through his hair, his arm made a shadow on the wall. “Huck, now...”
“Have a good night, dear old friend.”
“Come on. Don’t kick me out. Today’s been dreadful, for all of us.”
“No,” Huck said with an eerie calm. “Not for all of us. But really, what could be worse than the day I found out she was gone? There’s no pain that measures up to that moment...so, this? Today? Your epic botching of a case giftwrapped for you?” Huck brought his free hand to his mouth and mimed blowing dust off of his palm. Then he wiped his hands together, tucking the single piece of paper under his arm. “That’s all you are to me...and I’d appreciate it if you got out of my house.”
“Huck—”
“Leave,” he instructed. And after a moment of hesitation, Harris rolled his shoulders back, waved goodbye to Gordon, and disappeared into the well-lit hallway; his shoes hit the tiled floor with deliberate thuds as he traveled back the way he came, carrying himself away from them.
“Was he right?” Gordon asked after Huck shut the door and the condo settled back into shadow.
“He wasn’t right about anything,” Huck said as he turned with a methodical slowness and walked toward his son. He held out the paper and gave it a little shake. “You mean, will I let Harris intervene? Will I take that killer’s life like he took everything from me?”
Gordon cringed.
Huck lowered his eyes.
“No,” he answered to the floor. “What’s the point?”
“Revenge,” Gordon seethed. He hit his fist against the floor.
“Revenge will eat you alive,” Huck said and crouched to the ground and put his hands on Gordy’s head. �
�That’s the thing you’ll learn when you become a man, my son, about the things that could kill you, devour your humanity...the part of you that still wants goodness and justice.”
“I’m already a man, Dad.” Gordy pulled his head back from under his father’s touch. “I’ll be a senior in college. How is that not enough of a man for you?”
“I won’t let this consume our family,” Huck said without answering his son.
“You should go to her.” Gordy looked up at the ceiling and Huck nodded once. Then Gordy sighed a sleepy sigh and rested back against the couch. He placed a hand on his sister’s back and felt her tiny body rise and fall. “This one...she’ll never understand...not really. It will be like a dream. The sister she never knew, the long days at the courthouse, our loss. She’ll grow up and never know...”
“She’ll know,” Huck corrected as he rose from the floor and walked toward the door. “She’ll feel it in her bones.”
The roof of the building of luxury condominiums was a communal gathering place. Outdoor lights glimmered around the perimeter and a small fire pit had burned down to coals. It was spring, too cold for parties, and Josephine shivered, curled up in a wooden chair, her wine glass dipping precariously toward the cement.
Huck watched her from the stairwell before making his entrance. Clearing his throat, he jogged her attention and she shifted, pulling her glass upright, the red liquid sloshing against the sides.
“Harris came by,” Huck announced, and he pulled up a chair beside his wife.
“It’s not his fault,” Josephine replied and she took a drink. Her words slurred and her eyes drooped. “No one’s fault. No one’s fault.” She repeated the phrase and then snickered at it without a hint of mirth.
“Blair needs to be put to bed.”
“You do it.” She raised her eyebrows.
He stared at her. “Look at this. I found her paper.” He held up his prized white sheet with excitement. Josephine made a grab for it, but Huck pulled it way. “No, no. Not yet.”
The Variables (Virulent Book 3) Page 1