The Girl in the Mist: A Misted Pines Novel

by Ashley, Kristen

  Which, so far, watching that was the only bright spot in my day.

  We barely got back inside when Bohannan demanded, “I want to know everything she told you.”

  “I think you need to talk to your daughter first.”

  His eyes went to the ceiling, he nodded, then moved to the stairs.

  I was making us sandwiches for lunch when he got back.

  By the way, the police had left at about 10:30.

  It was now 2:46.

  “She heard,” Bohannan said, strolling in, face his normal neutral but this time subtly laced with equal doses of annoyed and troubled.

  The annoyed part was partially explained when he slid Celeste’s phone on the counter by the bread.

  “Oh boy,” I said, eyeing it.

  “Her phone was blowing up. Everyone wants to know if she saw anything and what we’re doing.” He leaned the side of his hip into the counter. “She also informed me she’s going to the party tonight, which is still on. That isn’t a surprise. It’s the perfect opportunity to spread gossip and rumors. That, and teenagers are drawn to anything that tests their immortality.”

  Wasn’t that the truth?

  “She wasn’t thrilled when I told her she was not going. We had words. She didn’t like my words. I didn’t like hers, and I’m the boss. So now she’s grounded until Monday. Since it’s Friday, that didn’t go over too good. I’ve been briefed that’s torture, and don’t I know Will is especially going to need her now. I said if Will needs her, he can come to the house, and I’ll pour him a Coke. At that juncture, she shared Will is ‘anti-parent,’ and I have to respect that…considering. I told her I could get that, but I’m not his parent, I’m hers, and she’s not going to that party or seeing Will unless he comes to the house. She said something I didn’t like a whole lot more than all the other shit she was saying.” He tapped her phone. “And now she’s grounded from her phone too. She ‘pretty much’ hates me and ordered me from her room until she can stand to look at me again. I obliged.”

  That “anti-parent” part was interesting.

  “I’ll give her some time to cool down and then go talk to her,” I mumbled.

  “We need to do this because you and I are doing this,” he announced.

  I was kind of following, but I let him speak on before I commented.

  “In this house, you don’t get off easy from a hissy fit. And don’t give me shit. When the boys had them, I called them hissy fits for them too. They hated that.”

  I bet they did.

  I smirked.

  One side of Bohannan’s beard twitched before he kept going.

  “What I’m saying is, there is no good cop, bad cop sitch when it comes to that. I’ve heard some of the greatest minds speak about a full spectrum of facets of psychology. I get hormones. I get peer pressure. I get developing psyches. I get kids are sponges soaking up everything around them, the vastness of which it’s a wonder their heads don’t explode, and they haven’t developed the mechanisms to filter out what they don’t need, especially the shit that’s harmful. I get that high school is a microcosmic cesspool of all that, and I swear to Christ, with some of the things I’ve seen and read, I sometimes wonder why we make our children endure it. But she doesn’t disrespect her dad. It’s not that I feed her, clothe her, put a roof over her head, and I’m older than her. It’s because I love her. I don’t do a fucking thing except out of love for her. And if she can’t respect that, then she’s going to learn.”

  “You could have just said, ‘there is no good cop, bad cop sitch, if she’s acting up, we’re both bad cops,’ and I would have got the message,” I joked.

  He stared down at me.

  “But you even manage to turn bitching about your daughter being mean to you into something badass,” I concluded.

  “All her life, from when she was a little girl, but especially recently, when I was alone with it and she needed her mother most of all, I had no one to unload this shit on or talk it through with.”

  That sure shut me up.

  He slid a hand around the back of my neck and pulled me closer to him as he dipped his head down to mine.

  “I’m not saying don’t tease me,” he continued. “What I’m saying is, it sure as fuck felt good to come and unload that on you.”

  Well…

  Just fuck it.

  I pressed into him, wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him.

  His tongue slid between my lips, and I truly tasted him for the first time.

  Part of me felt, with all the buildup, this might be a letdown.

  It wasn’t.

  He tasted better than I expected, and he used his tongue like he used his brain, his body—assured and talented, creative and unexpected.

  He’d been right, we shouldn’t do this until we could do it.

  I liked it so much, I automatically arched into him, holding on, letting him explore, feeling—

  “Oh, I see. Come up and be a jerk to me, come down like that was nothing and make out with Delly,” Celeste snapped.

  We stopped kissing, but Bohannan didn’t let me go, which was good, because my knees were weak, and I needed a second (or thirty of them) to catch my breath.

  He just turned his head to his daughter.

  “You know, it’s stupid, you two in different rooms,” she went on. “It’s like, I mean, what do you think I am? Wait, it’s not stupid. It’s insulting.”

  “Good you think that, because Delphine is moving to my room tonight.”

  That was news.

  Excellent news.

  I fought smiling.

  “Good,” she sniped. “Fine,” she kept at it when he made no reply. “I mean, somebody I know was floating dead out by our pier this morning, off I went to school, and nobody told me.”

  “Yes, sweetheart, and that’s upsetting for all of us, but you don’t see me, Larue, Jace or Jess throwing tantrums and acting like a five-year-old.”

  I sucked my lips between my teeth because that was so not the thing to say.

  Celeste confirmed my thought by skewering her father with a look, shouting, “I guess I’ll just starve!” and running from the room.

  “Please tell me that’s normal,” Bohannan said to the place she’d just been.

  “It’s totally normal.” He looked down at me. “In fact, it was beginning to seem a little weird, how sweet and cute and wonderful she was. I feel a whole lot better now.”

  He smiled at me.

  The smile faded when he said, “Now, tell me everything Lana said.”

  “Maybe after you eat,” I suggested.

  “Why?”

  “Because I write romance novels and I have a vivid imagination and a firm philosophy that you should do whatever makes you feel good, so I don’t hold judgment. But you might have a different take.”

  His gaze drifted to the sandwiches, and since he’d just used a bevy of them, apparently, he’d run out of words for the time being, because he made no reply.

  I let him go and urged, “C’mon. Let’s eat. Then let’s get your Lana brief over with.”

  Bohannan turned fully to the sandwiches.

  Which meant he agreed.

  Thirty-Six

  Pleasantville

  After turkey and Swiss, and cheddar and sour cream Ruffles, we went to Bohannan’s office, where I sat in a club chair by the window and he rolled his desk chair to it, up close, so one of his knees was touching one of mine.

  And if that wasn’t enough, even as I sat back, comfortable in the chair, he leaned into his elbows on his knees to listen to me.

  There, I laid out the tale of Bobby, Lana, Jay, Annie, Wendy, Dwayne, Sarah, Dale and Audrey.

  I was pleased he didn’t sneer or make some comment or do anything but watch me and listen attentively.

  Then again, he’d probably seen it all, and his G-man, “Just the facts, ma’am,” persona was always in place when he listened to stuff like that in order that he didn’t give anything away.

>   And even if I was no-judge about most everything, including people’s sexual appetites, still, there had been hurt and harm, and I might have only had one side of the story, which my own history meant I’d be sensitive to and prone to support.

  However.

  “This place is like a warped Pleasantville,” I decreed. “It’s all hunky dory in black and white when everyone’s playing their roles and no one’s asking too many questions, but inject a little real life in there, and the colorful characters stand out, but instead of bright and beautiful, they’re squalid and tawdry.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered, like he wasn’t really listening to me.

  “What?” I asked.

  He focused on me.

  “I don’t get how Lana moves from what happened to Alice to what happened to Malorie, and she made mention she’s not surprised by it.”

  I thought maybe he took that part the wrong way.

  “I don’t think that’s a thing, Bohannan. I think she was just letting off steam. I think she’s devastated about Malorie, but she isn’t behaving how people expect women to behave in a time like this. She’s cynical and bitter and there are reasons why she’s those things. I didn’t get a bead on her that she was faking any of that, especially when she was crying. Seeing how he was with her, I also think her boyfriend cares a lot about her, and he’s been waiting for her to make this move. But she’s not making it because she’s seizing an opportunity, she’s making it because she genuinely needs to be with someone who gives a shit about her because she’s wrecked at the loss of Malorie.”

  His reply was, “There is no time in my life when I’ve ever been able to say Bobby Graham was a decent guy.”

  There you go.

  “He’s an unqualified ass,” he went on.

  “Right,” I murmured.

  “What I meant was, there are people who do things to kids. There are people who do things to teenagers. There are people who do things to women. There are people who do things to boys or men. Although not unheard of, a suspect jumping from an eight-year-old to a nineteen-year-old doesn’t fit neatly into a profile. Dahmer was convicted of killing seventeen men and boys. Of them, ten were in their twenties, three were nineteen, two were in their thirties, and two were fourteen. The ages ranged from fourteen to thirty-six, which is a large gap. But even though you and I think of fourteen-year-olds as boys, they weren’t eight.”

  “I see what you’re saying.”

  “He’s earned that blame, but she blames Bobby for a lot. And if she formed this club you explained with the other women whose men Audrey targeted, she and they have been feeding their resentment for a long time. Not only not letting it die but nourishing it so it grows.”

  It really couldn’t be argued they’d done that.

  Bohannan kept speaking.

  “Jace, Jess, Harry and me have turned over every stone. Including all the shit that swirled around Audrey. Lana and Bobby stayed together, until now. Wendy and Dwayne too. Annie and Jay broke up. Word is, Wendy busts Dwayne’s balls, and Dwayne kisses Wendy’s ass, and I’m not talking in a way that Dwayne evidently has a proclivity for that to be. That wasn’t the way they were before Audrey. She’s making him pay for the long haul. What Lana said to you, she’s been waiting to get her ducks in a row. When Bobby was having an affair with Audrey, Lana was a stay-at-home mom. She didn’t have any power, in terms of the fact she didn’t have an easy way to strike out on her own. I’m pretty stunned about Sarah. Revenge fucking doesn’t seem like her thing. But if she’s egged on by her posse, that’s a different story.”

  “You can’t blame them,” I defended.

  He shook his head. “What I’m saying is, that’s their damage. And they’ve been embroiled in that damage for a really long time. All of them, hanging on to it. So it stands to reason with what happened to Alice, that would be Lana’s go to. We’ve looked at everyone who has anything to do with Dale, Audrey, Will, Alice or Sarah, which sent us looking at everyone who had anything to do with those players. Unless I’m losing my touch, there’s no one in that mix who would drive all the way to Berkeley to snatch a college freshman and drag her back to Washington to kill her, roll her in plastic and leave her in a lake.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, knowing he saw Alice, knowing how deeply he investigated that, knowing he saw Malorie, knowing he just listened to all I said about Lana and that lot, and last, knowing he’d spent hours with those letters, I asked, “So what do you think?”

  “I don’t wanna say what I think.”

  “Say it anyway.”

  “Right, then, you don’t wanna hear what I think.”

  I leaned to him and grabbed his hand.

  “Bohannan, I’m not just here for my sage wisdom on how to valiantly and highly successfully raise teenage girls.”

  His lips tipped up, but his head dropped down, and he watched himself as he turned my hand in his.

  What he didn’t do was tell me.

  I was about to prompt him when, abruptly, his head came up.

  “When you saw that guy out your window, and you texted us, what was your first thought?”

  I sensed this was a very important question, but I felt the answer was obvious.

  “That he shouldn’t be there.”

  “You were surprised when we thought it was about you. A fan or some photographer,” he noted.

  That needle bomb exploded again, piercing my skin everywhere from the small of my back to up over my scalp.

  “You’d seen him seconds, who did you think he was?” Bohannan pressed.

  “Alice’s killer,” I whispered.

  “Why?”

  “Needle bomb.”

  “What?”

  “It just happened again. Just now. It starts at my lower back, but it feels like, in a wave, thousands of needles are being jabbed in, from my back all the way up over my head.”

  “Have you ever felt that before?”

  I shook my head, but then clenched his hand.

  “Mom had a man friend I didn’t like. I was there, in the house, when she told him about me, when before, she’d kept the fact she had a kid from him, and he lost it. Shouting at her. I came out of my room and looked at him, he looked at me, and it wasn’t as intense, but it happened then. I was probably, I don’t know, eleven.”

  “You see him again?”

  I shook my head.

  Bohannan didn’t say anything.

  Now I was clutching his hand. “Do you still think this is about me?”

  “No, baby,” he said quietly.

  He then took in a big breath.

  And he held my eyes when he said, “I think it’s about me.”

  Thirty-Seven

  You Pay Attention

  “Explain,” I demanded.

  “You like me.”

  “Yes.”

  “A lot.”

  I gave him a look.

  He smiled, but he didn’t mean it. He was trying to inject levity.

  I wasn’t feeling like being leavened.

  “You’re not tight with your mom.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “But she’s your mom.”

  “Yes, Cade, just tell me,” I snapped, impatient.

  “She’s your mom, and you were eleven and you needed her, you probably felt something for her, if only because she was what you had. And this guy shouting at her was a threat to her.”

  Now I was following.

  And my skin started prickling.

  Bohannan explained it anyway.

  “You saw that guy out your window, heading to my home, you like me, you sensed a threat…to me. And you pay attention. You can read people. And we aren’t sure, but we think you were right.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “So, baby,” he scooted closer, and held my hand tight, “what I think is, this isn’t about Audrey or Alice or Malorie or Lana, or Bobby and Dale being cheating assholes who didn’t know how to talk to their wives about things they wanted in bed. It’s ab
out me. He’s calling me out. He’s testing me. And that means…”

  Oh God.

  Oh dear God.

  “There’s not going to be a pattern. There’s not a profile. Malorie being vaguely connected to Alice is a red herring. It’s to lead me off track when there isn’t a track. The next person could be anybody. Because this is him versus me.”

  Thirty-Eight

  Catastrophic

  If you have an abundance of it, as a parent, you strategize the real estate of your house very carefully.

  Even before Bohannan really kissed me, I understood why Grace and he put the boys in the basement, and Celeste’s room was all the way down the hall, to the front of the house, whereas Bohannan’s was at the opposite corner in the back.

  Warren and I had not lasted long after Fenn was born.

  Angelo and I were married for almost eleven years, and we had Camille right away, because I wanted my kids to be born close together and have every opportunity to build that brand of sibling camaraderie (fortunately, in this, I succeeded, though truthfully, they did it).

  Me not having sex did not mean I wasn’t sexual. I gave myself orgasms regularly and had what I would estimate was an above-average, very healthy sex drive.

  Angelo was a self-professed sex addict, and perhaps this was a thing (and I’d done research on it not only because of how it affected my life, but possibly using it in books, and I still thought it was a cop-out, but I say that with the caveat that I have a block to it, because it might exist as a bona fide psychological condition, but Angelo had used it in an attempt to keep me).

  In other words, Angelo and I had sex all the time.

  So we made very good use of baby monitors and our real estate.

  This was on my mind as I was standing in my jammies, brushing my teeth in Bohannan’s bathroom.

  It wasn’t the only thing on my mind, which was understandably cluttered.