TC doodled a pattern with the tip of his index finger on Gene’s jeans-clad thigh. “When can she come home?”
Dru’s heart broke a little more, hearing that. How could a child understand a thing like this when even the parents couldn’t accept it—that their own child had predeceased them?
“Well,” Gene said, “she can’t. That’s just how it works. When you go to heaven and you’re an angel, you have to stay there.”
“We’ll have a funeral for her in a few days,” Joy said, smoothing TC’s hair.
“Like we did for Molly?”
“Yes,” Gene said.
Joy must have been aware of Dru after all, because she looked up. “Our Westie,” she explained.
“I remember,” Dru said. “Can I do anything for you? Call Pastor Ingalls or anyone?”
“He knows. He’s coming by later.”
“Would you like me to make a pot of coffee, then?” Dru wanted to do something, anything, almost as much as she wanted to leave.
“Oh, that would be nice,” Joy said, and while her response seemed normal, her face and voice were devoid of expression. Her gestures were rote. It was eerie and horrible.
Dru turned away, retreating to the kitchen. She found the makings for coffee, and once it had brewed, the Westins joined her, sitting at the island. They’d put on a movie for TC.
“Toy Story,” Gene said.
“It’s his favorite movie to watch with Becca,” Joy said. She had her eye on Dru as she filled the mugs. “I should make him something to eat.” She sounded fretful now.
“He said he wasn’t hungry. Remember, honey?” Gene said.
“Yes, but still . . .”
Dru brought the mugs to the island. “What about a PB and J?” she asked. “Would TC eat that, do you think?”
“I don’t know what to tell Pastor Ingalls about the funeral.” Joy spoke as if Dru hadn’t. “No one at the morgue could say when we can bring Becca home. It might not be until next week.”
Gene glanced at Dru. “They’re doing an autopsy.”
“I can’t stand the thought of it.” Joy curled her shoulders, holding her elbows in the cups of her hands. “All those people, the police and medical examiners, all of them looking at her, touching her. Becca would hate it. She never liked being the center of attention, and she was so modest. She would barely let me see her in her bra and panties.”
A sound broke from Gene, something between a cough and a sob.
Dru put her hand on his shoulder, and he looked at it, and then up at her, and his eyes filled with something bitter like hatred, even loathing. Dru took her hand away.
“We know that punk your daughter’s marrying did this. He hurt our girl.” Gene stared at Dru. “The cops know it, too.”
“I don’t think they know that for sure.” Dru backed away a step, shocked by Gene’s accusation despite Shea’s warning.
“Becca was murdered in his apartment.” Gene’s voice rose. “He’s missing. Add it up.”
Dru had added it up, and AJ’s lack of a motive aside, her conclusion was the same as Gene’s, but she couldn’t tell him how sick it made her. Not without betraying Shea, and that was the one thing she simply would not, could not, do—not for anyone. Not even the Westins, who were in such terrible pain.
“I never liked that kid. I went to school with his mother. Lily Axel.” Gene made the name sound like a joke. “Rich bitch. Thought she was better than everyone else. At least until she stepped in all that shit with the cops over in Phoenix. Like mother, like son.”
What shit? Dru wanted to ask, but of course she didn’t. She couldn’t.
“What I heard, the old guy she married, Paul Isley? It was his influence and her daddy’s money got her out of that, but I will be goddamned if it gets AJ out of this. I’ll see Jeb Axel and his fucking punk grandson in hell first, if I have to take us there myself.” Gene got up, fast enough that the bar stool went over, slamming to the floor. Dru jumped, and she jumped again when Gene went out the back door, slamming it so hard the glass rattled.
Dru looked at Joy, but she was staring into her untouched mug of coffee, gone cold now. Her nose was red and running; tears smeared her face. Somehow Dru was relieved to see them. She found a box of tissues in the powder room off the kitchen and brought several back to Joy, handing them to her.
“Becca was pregnant.”
Dru was righting the stool when Joy said it. “Pregnant?” she repeated. As in having a baby? The words ran stupidly through her mind.
“The medical examiner said she was about five weeks along.” Joy looked up at Dru.
“I didn’t know she was seeing anyone.”
“She wasn’t—I mean, not since AJ broke it off with her. I told her she should go out more, find another boyfriend, that it was the fastest way to mend a broken heart, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She said AJ was the one for her, and he knew she was the one for him, too.”
Dru stared, speechless.
“I wasn’t happy to hear it, either, trust me. They evidently ran into each other at Starbucks, in March, I think. One thing led to another. Becca only told me about it a couple of weeks ago.” Joy paused. “I’m sorry for the pain this causes you or Shea.”
“The baby was AJ’s?”
“Well, yes. Who else? The ME’s doing a DNA test to determine paternity for sure, but I told him he didn’t have to for my sake.”
“Was the murdering son of a bitch going to tell Shea?” Dru gripped the seat back of the bar stool she’d righted. Her mind flashed to Erik, his assertion that there was no way AJ had been interested in Becca. AJ had fooled him, too.
“Becca said they were waiting for the right time. That’s why she went to Dallas Tuesday. She said they were going to figure it out, and I let her go.” Abruptly, Joy’s head fell back. “I let her go,” she wailed, and the sound was like nothing Dru had ever heard. After a moment, leveling her gaze, she said, “I will never forgive myself.”
There was no point in arguing, Dru thought. She would blame herself if she were Joy. Dru shifted her glance, jaw knotted, struggling for composure. She thought if AJ were to appear in front of her, she would strangle him with her bare hands. How could he have done this to Becca, to Shea? Betrayed them in such a horrible way? It made sense now, though, that he was on the run, because that’s what rat bastards did—they ran.
“Gene thinks Becca was fooling herself. AJ didn’t want the baby,” Joy said. She was back to speaking in her eerily flat voice. “Gene thinks if it had been born, it would have kept AJ from what he did want, which was to keep screwing—to keep fucking—Gene said fucking—Becca behind Shea’s back.”
“What do you think, Joy?”
“I don’t know. Becca seemed convinced AJ loved her.” Joy fiddled with her coffee mug. “Maybe it wasn’t AJ but someone else who was there in his apartment.”
“Like who? Who else would have a reason to—”
“Someone who hated her.” Joy looked at Dru now, locking her gaze, and there was some awful disturbance in her eyes, a sort of challenge.
She seemed to be waiting for Dru to catch on, and when Dru did, her stomach lurched. “You think it was Shea! You talked to that detective, Bushnell. He put the idea in your head.”
“He asked me about her—”
“Joy, for God’s sake, Shea’s been at home, with me, since Sunday. The girls were all together on Tuesday, getting the mason jars in Fredericksburg, having lunch. Becca was sick—”
“I told the police that, but Shea could’ve gone to Dallas later.”
“No. She was here on Tuesday night, all night. We had dinner. We worked on the wedding favors.” Dru said what came into her head. She and Shea might have done something else, or nothing. What mattered, though, what she was sure of, was that Shea hadn’t driven to Dallas or anywhere else since she’d been back in Wyatt.
Joy didn’t confirm or deny Dru’s defense of Shea, and the air between them was thick with foreboding, a darker shadow of doubt
.
“The wedding is two weeks from Saturday.” Dru didn’t know why she said it.
“I’ll have buried my girl by then,” Joy said.
5
Lily called Paul in the hour or so before dawn, and when he answered, his voice, like hers, was gravelly with lack of sleep.
“I heard from AJ just now,” she said. “He asked me to bring him his passport.”
“So he’s not out of the country,” Paul said after a moment. “But the cops haven’t found his passport.”
“Does he have a safe-deposit box?” Should she know? Did other parents know such things about their grown children?
Paul ignored her question. “Did he say where he is? How did he sound?”
“I don’t know. Tired?” Lily thought about it. Her dad had gone downstairs to make coffee, but she was still in the upstairs hallway near the ancient landline, afraid to leave it in case AJ called again. “He didn’t talk much above a whisper.”
“I wish he’d called me,” Paul said with obvious disappointment.
Lily agreed. “Yes, I’m sure you would have handled it better.” She meant it; she wished AJ had called Paul, too. Then when he came away with no more information than she had, he’d have only himself to blame.
AJ had a safe-deposit box, Paul said. He’d seen to it when AJ went overseas. If Lily didn’t know, it was because she’d forgotten, not because Paul had failed to tell her. “Bushnell can get a warrant,” he said, “if they won’t let me open it. He’s getting one now for AJ’s cell phone. It’s just a long damn process.”
Lily said, “Don’t you think it’s time to contact Edward and let him know what’s going on?” It occurred to her if he’d listened to the news, he might know already. It was even possible, she thought, that he would reach out to her. The realization made her heart pound irrationally. The possibility of talking to him again, of seeing him, thrilled her even as she was panicked by it.
Paul said, “I think getting a criminal attorney involved at this point is premature, but should the time come, I’m not calling on Dana. I’ll get someone else.”
Lily was taken aback. What did he mean? She was afraid to ask. Afraid a discussion would lead to an argument. Paul would see that she cared, that it mattered. It wasn’t a risk she could take.
A silence closed around them, an empty room without an exit.
Paul broke it. “I asked Bushnell if he was still thinking this could be a kidnapping and Becca somehow got mixed up in it. Got in the way.”
Lily couldn’t speak. Her mouth was dry, as dry as sticks.
“I could see by the look on his face that he doesn’t. I almost wish for it, you know? A ransom demand? At least then we’d know what the hell it is we’re dealing with. The cops would get the FBI involved, get somebody on this that’s got a fucking brain.”
Paul didn’t ordinarily use foul language. He claimed those who did were only showing their ignorance and lack of civility. But he was at the end of his rope now, and he had no control. The police weren’t his employees; they didn’t take orders from him. Inside, he must be seething, Lily thought. He must be ready to explode.
“If Bushnell or any of those assholes call you, don’t tell them you spoke to AJ,” he said. “I don’t want to help them find AJ, not until we know more about the kind of trouble he’s in. Tell them to call Jerry—let him deal with them.”
“But I don’t understand.” Lily went to the top of the staircase and looked down it, seeing nothing. “Suppose AJ has been kidnapped, or someone is keeping him against his will. We need the police to get him back. Not telling them could get AJ killed.” I will never forgive you, never speak to you again if that happens. The threat burned through her mind. It was the same one she’d shouted at Paul after he’d forced AJ to enlist.
“You want him arrested and charged with murder? Fine, talk to them, then. I can’t stop you.”
“No, Paul. I didn’t mean—” Lily stopped. “Paul?” she said, but she knew he’d hung up on her, that she was talking to dead air.
She was annoyed when her father agreed with Paul.
“If AJ’s trying to get away, get somewhere he feels safe, we don’t want to go tipping off the cops,” her dad said. “If they were to corner him and things got heated, it could go bad in a hurry.”
They were sitting in the pair of old rockers on the front porch now, drinking the coffee her dad had made.
“Paul said it’s likely they’re watching the airports.”
“Because they haven’t found the passport.”
“Yes.” Lily set down her mug, feeling too shaky to hold it. Before coming outside, she’d put on an old sweater she’d found hanging in the coat closet, and she wrapped it more tightly around her.
“I just don’t think the kid would go on the run without telling someone. If not you, me, or Paul, then Shea. He’d want her with him.”
“She hasn’t talked to him, though.”
“So she says.”
Lily looked over at her dad. “You think she’s protecting him?”
“I don’t know her well enough to answer that. But we both know people lie. For any number of reasons,” he added, and when he shifted his gaze from hers, it gave Lily an odd feeling.
“Paul said they’re getting AJ’s cell-phone records. Won’t they find out who he’s called and where he is?”
“Yeah, they have to get a subpoena, and that can take a while if a judge will even grant the request. The cops have got to establish probable cause.”
It seemed to Lily there was plenty of that. While they sat around talking about the alternatives—maybe AJ was a fugitive, maybe AJ was a hostage—the evidence was pointing to something far worse, a possibility that none of them wanted to look at, much less discuss. “Paul wants me to call Jerry Dix if the police try to question me again.”
“Dix? He’s a corporate attorney, for Christ’s sake. Who was the attorney you worked with before when AJ was arrested? Edward something.”
“Edward Dana. I think we should call him, but Paul wants to hire someone else.”
“But if it hadn’t been for Dana back when AJ got into all that trouble before, he would have seen prison time. Paul knows that. What’s his objection?”
“I don’t know.” Lily was lying, and possibly her dad knew it. She could feel his gaze, but she couldn’t meet it. She was afraid he would see, as Paul must have, the warmth of her feelings for Edward, the telltale signs of her attraction for him that wouldn’t go away. It was three years since they’d last met at their place—one of them—the little roadside café with the terrible food and worse coffee north of Greeley. It had been raining that day, hard enough that she’d felt the wet seeping through the thin soles of her flats, splattering her ankles. Standing beneath the awning with Edward, waiting for a break in the storm to make a run for it, he had brushed the side of her hand; he had linked his little finger with her own. Even the memory of that—his slightest touch—heated her longing for him. And it was wrong. It could never be.
Sudden birdsong shattered the silence, and she shied from it. See me, see me, see me, it seemed to cry. Lily hunted for the singer and spotted him, the bright-red flash of a cardinal flitting through the bony spread of an old live oak near the drive.
Her dad said, “You realize whoever murdered Becca could have AJ’s credit cards and driver’s license, his bank-account numbers.”
“But his wallet was found in his apartment.”
“Was everything in it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, we know they’ve got his truck, unless they’ve ditched it by now.”
An image darkened Lily’s mind of AJ, driving God knew where, with a gun to his temple. She slammed a mental door on it. “If he’s picked up in another state, it might be days before we hear,” she said, and it didn’t surprise her when her dad locked her gaze.
He knew the reference Lily was making. When she’d gone off with Jesse Kerman after graduating from high school, her
father hadn’t known where she was until she was arrested and jailed a week later in Phoenix for being an accessory to armed robbery and murder when Jesse held up a mini-mart. The police there had kept her almost seventy-two hours before allowing her to call her dad. He’d been out of his mind with worry by then. Lily had always thought fear was the reason he hadn’t killed her when he got to Phoenix with Paul.
She’d been eighteen, only months younger than AJ had been when he’d been arrested. The charge had been similar, too—accessory to murder. Even the circumstances were similar. AJ had been out with a rough gang of friends he’d taken up with, like the crew of guys Jesse had ridden with, guys who were into mostly petty crime. They were an older crowd, the way Jesse’s crowd had been, and seemed dangerous in a way that AJ had thought he wanted to be. Who knew why. Lily hadn’t understood the compulsion in herself. But it had taken AJ to the same wrong time, wrong place as it had Lily. In AJ’s case, at a party, a fight over a girl had ended in gunfire. Two people had died, three had been injured. AJ had tried to stop it; evidence had ultimately proved that, the same as evidence in Lily’s situation had proved her innocence. But it had taken months of expensive legal wrangling, and once AJ’s ordeal was over, Paul was finished. That’s when he’d delivered his ultimatum: AJ could enlist or get out. Either way, Paul was done supporting him. AJ needed discipline; he needed to grow up, find a direction. Be a man.
Lily had been torn.
Her dad had had a similar response when he’d brought her home from Phoenix. Get a job, go back to school, or get married, he’d said. He and Paul had gone out on a limb for her, and she’d been given a second chance. He wasn’t about to let her piss it away. “I never thought I’d say this,” he’d told her, “but I’m glad your mother’s dead, that she didn’t live to see what you’ve done to yourself.”
It had nearly crushed her, hearing him say that. Lily had always thought she would be a better person if her mother had lived. She wouldn’t have made so many terrible and irrevocable mistakes.
She looked over at her dad now. “Did AJ ever tell you that he dreamed of this house while he was in Afghanistan?”
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