He had a lawyer, but right now, what they were haggling about was not how long he’d be in prison, but which prison he’d be in and how comfortable he’d be behind bars until he died.
I did not care.
I cared about the women.
“We’re giving them assistance. It’ll be a long row, but we’ll keep our eye on them,” Agent Palmer assured.
I told her if they needed anything financially, I should be her first call. Or if they needed anything at all, please contact me.
She made note of that.
And we were done.
But I wasn’t done.
I called Hawk Delgado and got Elvira, who told me they’d wrap up, send me a report, handle the devolvement of what they were doing to keep an eye on Camille and Joan, and their final invoice would come with the report.
I called Alicia, who already knew, and was beside herself with glee, for her, for Russ and Michael, and for me.
I called Russ, who also already knew and was relieved and happy, but a little worried about me.
I called Michael, who further already knew, and said, “Maybe now we can stop living under your shit.”
Fun facts: Russ had gone on to star in two long-ish running sitcoms and a two-season, one-hour dramatic comedy that didn’t have a long life but was rife with critical acclaim and still had fans demanding its return.
Alicia had moved to film and had done a slew of successful romantic comedies and was still doing them, perhaps not to the same box office, but it wasn’t anything to sneeze at.
Michael had two failed sitcoms, did so many pilots that weren’t picked up we’d lost count, and a short guest-starring stint on a political drama that earned him a Golden Globe and led him to believe he could be a dramatic actor, to unimpressive results.
I put Michael out of my mind, nothing was going to mess with my good mood that day.
I then talked to my two jubilant girls, ignored the calls and texts of my relieved exes, briefed a couple of friends who I knew would be worried, and texted Celeste with You up for an adventure after school?
To which I received, YES!!!!!
Which brought us to now.
Standing wearing cute sweaters and corduroy pants, scarves wrapped around our necks, both of us with fabulous knit caps over our hair, looking autumnal fabulous as we perused what was on offer in the huge crates outside the grocery store.
In other words, we were selecting pumpkins.
She held up a fugly, messed up one. “This is so Jace.”
She was so right.
“Toss it in.”
She put it in our cart.
I located a massive one. “Your dad?”
“Totes.”
I put it in the cart.
She found an even fuglier, messed up one for Jess, and we picked out ones for each other (she found one that was sheer pumpkin perfection for me, I found one that was even more perfect for her, and we both giggled about this).
Celeste had commandeered the cart and we were going to roll through the store to get what we needed for dinner, when I heard, “Ms. Larue?”
I turned.
And looked right into the face of Audrey Pulaski.
Twenty-One
Aromacobana
“I…sorry, I thought it was you,” Audrey said.
Celeste came up so close to my side, her arm was pressed to mine.
“Hello,” I said gently to Audrey.
She took a step toward us, glanced at Celeste and said, “Hi, honey.”
“Hi, Mrs. Pulaski.”
At her reply, I almost looked down at Celeste because her tone wasn’t her usual shy or warm and quiet, it was kind of cold and definitely remote.
Interesting.
“You and Will have fun last night?” she asked, her tone fake cheery and painful to hear.
“A little,” Celeste allowed.
“Good,” Audrey muttered. “I wanted to…” She looked in our cart and paled.
My heart stuttered as there were probably no jack-o’-lanterns at the Pulaski residence this year.
She pulled herself together and returned her attention to me.
“I wanted to thank you. For what you did. Offering those rewards. That was very kind.”
“Don’t.” I was still going gently. “Really.” I couldn’t say it was my pleasure. So I said, “Anyone with my resources would do the same.”
“I’m not sure they would,” she replied.
I had no answer to that, so I gave her a careful smile.
Another small step toward us, and her head tipped a little, but the movement was strange, like a bird’s.
“Do you…well, do you have any idea why Leland didn’t announce your offer?”
Goddamned Dern.
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t,” I told her.
She turned to Celeste.
I shifted my arm so it was around her.
Audrey did not miss this, and she winced.
God, this was torture.
It was plain to see her puzzle was broken and dark, re-forming even as she stood there, and it was one of those three-dimensional ones.
Dimension one: before Alice, and how Audrey was now plagued with thoughts, wondering if she should have done what she (allegedly) did to trap Dale by making Alice.
Dimension two: those now hazy, and getting terrifyingly hazier, days of the time with Alice and having everything she thought she wanted, though, even as she denied it, she knew there was a pall over that. A pall she’d lived with. A pall that might now bite her spectacularly in the ass. Last, a pall that had hung over her daughter her whole life.
Dimension three: the now, knowing she birthed a child who ended in a way so unimaginable, it shook a cocky, sharp, strong, intelligent young man to the point he was questioning his ability to control his actions, and in a very real way he feared he might commit murder himself as retribution. But it was Audrey’s actions (in Audrey’s mind, this was not the actual case) that led Alice on a collision course from birth to devastating death at the age of eight at the hands of a madman.
I was no psychologist. I could not tell her those hazy days would come back into focus. She’d never forget the beauty of her girl.
In fact, I could do nothing.
Her puzzle would have to re-form on its own, even she had little control over the process.
“Do you know, sweetie, if your dad told the sheriff not to?” she asked Celeste.
“No. He didn’t,” she announced. “Dad didn’t even know about it until…” I squeezed her, because that “until” was the day of her daughter’s funeral. “Later,” she finished.
Apparently, Bohannan’s Dad Ears were faulty, and Celeste hadn’t been out of hearing distance when we’d had our discussion, or one of the boys or someone at school told her.
Audrey’s gaze wafted—and I mean it—it wafted to mine.
“Don’t you find that strange?”
“I don’t really know much about these types of things,” I said.
“I wish I didn’t,” she told some point over my shoulder.
“Do you want to go somewhere?” I offered, and Celeste put her arm around me and poked me in my side.
What was that about?
I ignored it in the face of Audrey’s disorientation and pain.
“Sit down?” I went on. “Get a coffee. Talk?”
She semi-focused on me. “You were the nice one in that show. So very sweet. And they all said that was the way you are in real life. Like, you were playing yourself.”
I wasn’t.
I didn’t tell her that.
“I guess they were right,” she concluded.
I looked down at Celeste. “Is there a fun coffee shop in town?”
“Yeah. Aromacobana,” she answered.
Excellent coffee shop name.
“No, no.” Pause as we looked at her. “No. You’re in the middle of something.”
“I’m sure we can set these aside and come back for them later.�
�
“No, really, I have to…get…” a very long pause, “home.”
I asked a pertinent question. “Are you okay to drive?”
She looked surprised at the inference, squared her shoulders and said briskly. “Yes. Of course. Yes. I’m fine. It was nice to meet you and thank you again.”
“Please, don’t mention it.”
“Celeste, honey,” she whispered, her voice husky.
She then turned and scurried away.
I watched her but Celeste didn’t.
She disengaged from me, grabbed the cart and asked, “Ready?”
We went in. I left it while we picked up some things, but I went for it in the chip aisle.
“You were a little distant with her. No shade, just wondering.”
“Will hates her.”
I stopped at the Doritos.
She piled some in.
“That was, like, the first thing he said to me. He ordered a chocolate malt, turned to me and said, ‘I fucking hate Audrey. She’s such a bitch.’ And I know I’m cursing, but that’s what he said. Word for word.”
“The first thing he said?” I asked as she took us down the aisle and stopped at the Ruffles.
She opted for cheddar and sour cream.
I approved of her choice but only in my head.
She was talking.
“I wasn’t surprised. Everyone knows about her.”
“What does everyone know?”
She was now at the Pringles and considering her options.
I wasn’t sure who she was feeding, but my guess was she had a mental list, and if this was what fueled the Bohannans when I wasn’t around, I wasn’t going to stop her.
“That she broke up Mr. and Mrs. Pulaski.” She looked at me. “And by that, I mean the real Mrs. Pulaski.”
“This is known? In high school?”
“Will is popular,” she mumbled, adding more sour cream to the collection, this one with onion, and spicing things up with BBQ.
We rounded the end cap, and she kept talking.
“Anyway, she did it before.”
“Hold up,” I said.
She stopped.
“Before?” I asked.
“Yeah. To some other guy. He was smart enough not to get her pregnant, though. But when he wouldn’t leave his wife for her, she told his wife all about them hooking up. They almost got divorced. But they went to counseling and sorted themselves out. I bet she didn’t see that coming.”
I bet she didn’t.
Celeste continued, “So she set her sights on Mr. Pulaski.”
“I don’t want to talk trash about Mr. Pulaski, and when I say that, I really don’t. The man is in hell, and I have no idea about any of this. But I do think it’s important to note that, in things like this, it always but always takes two to tango.”
“Oh yeah. Will isn’t, like, clearing his dad. But, you know, he’s his dad. And they both, like, totally loved Alice. Like, you know how Dad and Jess and Jace are with me?”
“Yes.”
“That kind of love, except she’s still little.” She let that sit only a moment before, wistful, she said, “Or she was.”
“Does Will say that Audrey isn’t cut up about losing her daughter?”
If he did, he was talking through hurt.
The woman we just saw was destroyed.
“Oh no, she loved her too. Just that, you know, Will hates her. Audrey. Mrs. Pulaski. And, like, you’re new to town and you’re, like, able to go around and meet people and get to know stuff now. So you should know, no one in town likes her either. Not with what she did to that other couple. Not with her breaking up Mr. and Mrs. Pulaski. Not with her being…her.”
Before I could ask what that meant, Celeste started moving down the aisle again.
But she did it still talking.
“It’s actually a weird kind of gross because we all have to pretend to like her when none of us do. I mean, we feel sorry for her, but we don’t like her.”
“That’s a pretty strong collective we.”
She stopped. “What?”
“We, as in you?”
Her nose scrunched. “You know, when a mom and dad are together, they should be able to stay together. It’s already hard enough. They don’t need some…some…I don’t know what she is…making it tougher.”
All righty then.
“Agreed,” I said quietly.
She moved onward. “And anyway, Will feels like he has to be nice to her and feel sorry for her, and he can barely stand to look at her.”
Apparently, their first date was Celeste acting as sounding board to a justifiably angry, hurting young man.
“That has to be confusing,” I noted.
“Uh…yeah.”
We were in the cookie aisle.
And the Bohannans liked mega-stuff, both chocolate and golden.
How did these people keep fit?
“Does your dad know all this? I mean, about the earlier affair.”
“Everyone knows.”
I reached for an actual ingredient we needed for dinner, remarking, “I have to admit, I think it’s odd that this is talked about in high school.”
“Will’s a really good hockey player. We like our hockey in Misted Pines. You know, like other people like football. People just pay attention to things around guys like that. And he’s not quiet about it, or he wasn’t before. And the town isn’t that big. So it just…gets around.”
“Hmm…”
She stopped abruptly, and her gaze skittered to me.
“I’m not being mean,” she declared.
“You’re allowed to have an opinion, Celeste,” I replied.
“Obviously, it’s awful, what happened to Alice.”
“We’re not talking about Alice. We’re talking about something else.”
“I don’t want you to think—”
“Listen,” I said firmly. “I want you to share anything you want with me, how you want, unadulterated.”
“Un-ah-what?”
“Unadulterated. Honest. Straight.” I flapped a hand between us. “This is a no judgment zone.”
“Cool,” she whispered.
I gave her a wink. “Cool.”
We pushed forward but didn’t get far, when a lady in a home-knit, chunky wool sweater and beat up Dickies pants stopped at us.
“Won’t take up too much time in your day,” she said, voice low and chin in her throat like she was about to “ho, ho, ho” like Santa Claus. “Just wanted to say it was real kind, you doin’ that for little Alice.”
“I actually didn’t end up doing anything,” I replied.
“That’s ’cause Dern is a horse’s ass. But you met him, so s’pose you know that by now.”
I didn’t reply.
She squinted at me and said, “Yep. You know.” She squinted at Celeste. “Heya, gurl.”
“Heya, Frances.”
And true to her word of not taking up time, she moseyed on, saying, “Later.”
“Later,” Celeste called.
It took an aisle or two before Celeste said, “It was, you know.”
“What?”
“Really kind of you to do that for Alice.”
I shot her a grin, wrapped my arm around her shoulders, gave her a squeeze, she did that sweet teenager thing where she scrunched her shoulders forward while I did, but she didn’t pull away.
I let her go and we finished shopping.
Twenty-Two
Jack-o’-Lanterns
“We’re doing what now?”
Jace.
“No offense. But this is stupid.”
Jesse.
“Men.”
Bohannan, in what could only be described as a leashed bark.
Both boys looked to their dad.
Jace then turned to me.
“Right yeah. Totally into this, Delphine,” he outright lied.
Translation: We saw you sitting in the loveseat on the pier under the moon with Dad, but even be
fore, we knew what was happening and no way are we gonna cockblock. So we’re up to pretend we’re good with carving jack-o’-lanterns when we so totally are not.
“It’s not just carving pumpkins,” I told them. “It’s a ritual.”
Both boys stared at me, trying very hard to exude interest when they just wanted to stab some pumpkins a few times to make me happy, which would make their father not pissed at them, and their sister happy too, then go out to a bar, drink a few beers and maybe pick up a girl.
Bohannan watched me with Bohannan’s normal level of interest, that being he didn’t give much away, but he didn’t take his eyes off me.
Celeste was practically dancing because I’d told her this part already, and she was all excited to do “witchy” stuff because “witchy stuff is so cool right now…a few weekends ago I bought my first tarot deck and everything.”
“Okay, I do this every year in October, and when my girls were old enough, we did it together. Camille and Fenn would be over at my house doing it now, if Fenn wasn’t an ocean away, and I wasn’t two states from Camille.”
This spoke to Jason and Jesse, because doing something dorky and for children to appease their dad’s new girlfriend (maybe) was one thing.
Participating in a family tradition was another.
“The thing is…” I touched my pumpkin where it lay in front of me on newspapers that were spread over their dining room table (we all stood in front of our own pumpkins). “You carve off the top, like normal. But when you scoop out the seeds, you think…to yourself, you don’t have to share…about all the things you want in your life in the coming year. All the good things. Things you have you want to keep. Things you don’t have you want to find. It can be anything. It’s yours to decide.”
I picked up the knife I was going to use.
And I carried on.
“Then, when you start carving, you think of all the things this year that you weren’t a big fan of. Things you want to cut out of your life. Things that happened or things you felt or things about yourself you want to change. Each piece of pumpkin flesh carved out represents those things.”
When I took a moment to assess their interest, I saw even Bohannan was now paying a lot closer attention.
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