by Karen White
She turned the key in the ignition and listened with satisfaction as it hummed to life, the engine not as smooth as it could be but humming nonetheless. She pulled out of the carport and had made it to the front of her house before the car jerked, coughing and spluttering, and then the engine died completely. She tried turning the key again, hearing only the dry chugs of breath of a dying old man before she couldn’t get even that when she turned the key over and over.
Pursing her lips, she stared out the windshield, going through her options again and again before deciding that at least until the rain let up and she could walk to the main road, all she could do was wait.
• • •
MERILEE
Even though it was only around five o’clock in the afternoon, the storm howling outside and the time of year gave the skies outside a smudge of charcoal, the light barely hanging on to the day. She was beyond exhausted after the night in jail, her arraignment, and the whole ordeal of having to plead not guilty one more time for a crime she hadn’t committed.
Cynthia had had the foresight to bring Merilee’s minivan from Heather’s driveway to the police station, so at least she didn’t have to ask for another favor from Michael, who’d paid her bail without question, reminding her of why she’d married him in the first place.
As she made the slow drive home through the rain, she kept reaching for her phone to call Sugar, remembering each time that the police had kept it, having obtained a warrant to search it.
She knew calling Wade would have been pointless whether or not she had access to her phone. Wade, unable to reach Sugar, had called Cynthia to let her know that there’d been a construction accident on one of his sites and that his cell phone was buried in about ten feet of mud. He would come to Merilee’s house as quickly as he could, but it wouldn’t be anytime soon.
The Lincoln was parked outside Sugar’s house, and the front porch lights as well as the lamps in the front parlor were on. She considered stopping and letting Sugar know she was home but decided she’d call her once she’d had a chance to change her clothes and eat something. She was just so danged tired. Cynthia had told her she had everything under control and to trust her to do her job. All she wanted Merilee to do was to get a good night’s sleep and call her in the morning so they could discuss their game plan. Even with all that was going on in her head, Merilee knew a sleepless night spent in jail and the mental exhaustion of the last weeks would knock her out better than any sleeping pill.
The rain was still coming down in sheets, pooling in thick puddles on the drive, making it nearly impassable by car or foot and causing Merilee to consider it a near miracle that she didn’t get stuck. As she climbed the porch steps to her house in the quickly diminishing light, she noticed Lily’s rain boots tucked into the far corner of the porch. She almost brought them inside but left them there to show Lily that when looking for missing items, she should actually open her eyes.
Merilee let herself into the house, using the key under the mat and then bringing the key inside. Tonight was the beginning of not being so stupid and naïve ever again. If Wade was already on his way and didn’t have his phone, he wouldn’t be able to call her—she wasn’t even sure he had the landline number—he’d just have to bang loudly on the door if she’d already gone to bed.
The house sat in nearly complete darkness, so she quickly walked through it, turning on all the lights, leaving the binoculars—thankfully given back to her with her purse at the police station—on the kitchen table where Colin could find them when he returned home. She’d always found a dark house sad, reminding her too much of the days after David had died, when her mother hadn’t risen from her bed and the house had remained dark long after the sun had set.
Merilee spotted the yearbook neatly closed on the counter next to the phone and thought that Sugar must have put it there while cleaning the kitchen. She took a step toward it, wanting to put it away, but stopped. She’d take care of it tomorrow, when she wasn’t so danged tired.
She flipped on the TV, putting on the Weather Channel more for background noise than for anything else, but paused as she read the crawl at the bottom of the screen. Fulton County was listed in the red zone, alerting residents that a tornado had been spotted. She muted the television for a moment, listening for sirens, but all she could hear was the steady thrum of the rain against the roof and windows.
Next she checked the answering machine, where there were zero messages—no surprise there. Nobody called her landline anymore—except for Sugar—because everybody knew her cell number. She reached for her cell phone for about the tenth time since she’d been told the police were hanging on to it, then headed toward the bathroom to draw a bath.
She wasn’t usually a bath person, preferring the ease and speed of a shower in the morning before work. But she felt as if she needed soothing tonight and thought she might use the lavender bubble bath the children had bought for her for Mother’s Day. She’d not linger too long, knowing that bathing during a storm wasn’t the best idea. But after the twenty-four hours from hell she’d just had, Merilee desperately needed to relax.
After putting a stopper into the porcelain claw-foot tub, she turned on the faucets, then dumped a generous amount of bubble powder into the weak stream of water. So much for bubbles. At least the old plumbing still worked. While waiting for the tub to fill, she stripped off her clothes, tossing everything into the laundry basket. She wanted no smells to remind her of the jail or of her time spent there. After grabbing one of Lily’s large barrettes off the sink, she wound her long hair up into a messy bun and clipped the barrette in place.
A violent fork of lightning lit the sky, brightening the small space with its tiny black-and-white hexagonal tiles and chipped white porcelain pedestal sink, giving everything a gothic glow. A crack of thunder shook the house just a moment later, the lights flickering in tandem with another flash of lightning.
She turned off the taps, and even though she heard no sirens, she wasn’t going to get in the tub now. With every muscle in her body protesting, she pulled out the stopper, watching sadly as the two inches of water drained. At least the power was still on. She would turn on the television and find a nice relaxing movie to watch.
She glanced up at the small toiletries shelf above the tub, staring at an empty space, taking a moment until she realized what was missing. It was the small marble carriage clock she’d placed there to keep the children on track in the mornings. It wasn’t there. Nor was it on the floor, behind the toilet, or under the sink. It was heavy, which was why when she’d found it in the back of her bedroom closet, she knew it would stay put if she placed it there on the shelf. Except it hadn’t.
A cool chill pricked at her skin. She grabbed the plush blue chenille robe behind the bathroom door, knotting the tie around her waist. It had been Michael’s last birthday gift to her, and many times she’d thought about giving it away, but she couldn’t because she loved it too much. It was her favorite shade of blue, and so incredibly soft that on cold nights she even slept in it.
She placed a strip of toothpaste on her toothbrush, using Lily’s tube of paste. Her daughter was methodical about squeezing from the bottom to keep an even flow of paste until the last drop. Colin’s tube looked like a tangled, warped mess from a midair explosion. It had been such an exercise in manipulation to get the toothpaste out that Merilee had finally given in and bought separate tubes of the same brand just to save her sanity.
Merilee studied her face in the mirror as she brushed, looking for any new lines that the stress of the last twenty-four hours might have caused, listening to the sounds from the television set and the slap of rain against the window. She started to feel relaxed. Or, if not relaxed, then more calm.
A movement from the open doorway, reflected in the mirror behind her, caught her attention. She stopped, listening, her eyes focused on the mirror’s reflection. Had she forgotten to lock the door?
“Wade?” she called out through a mouthful of toothpaste. She waited for a moment before spitting into the sink. She rinsed her mouth quickly, then called out again. “Wade?”
She paused in the doorway, hearing the television and the relentless force of the rain against the house. Maybe the lights had flickered again, casting a quick shadow as they dimmed and then regained their brightness.
Pulling together the lapels of her robe, Merilee peered into the empty front room, then padded down the hall toward her bedroom. She was almost halfway into the room before she realized something was wrong. She stopped, trying to figure out what it was. Turning slowly to face the bed, she saw it.
On the corner of the white quilted bedspread lay her high school yearbook, opened to display a layout of senior photos. Her gaze drifted to the right-hand side; she knew which page she was looking at before she saw the photo in the bottom corner.
The yearbook hadn’t been there when she’d taken off her clothes. She knew it hadn’t. Because it had been on the kitchen counter. Closed. She remembered seeing it there, even though she should have put it away. But she hadn’t picked it up, had she?
The splash of water hitting the porcelain of the tub in the bathroom startled her, sucking the air out of her lungs.
Trying to avoid the creaks in the wood floors, she stepped carefully to the doorway and peered out into the hall. The sound of water filling the tub was louder here, the scent of lavender overwhelming, as if someone had just poured the entire box of bubble powder under the spout. Her blood thickened in her veins, rolling in viscous waves as it pumped its slow way through the chambers of her heart.
“Wade?” she called again, her voice barely above a whisper.
A figure stepped out of the bathroom, and Merilee screamed.
Thirty-five
SUGAR
“Damn.”
Sugar rarely cussed, and definitely never in public. But she was in her own living room, watching an exciting repeat episode of Murder, She Wrote, and just as they were about to reveal the murderer, the power had gone out.
She was prepared and had a flashlight and an extra set of batteries on her coffee table—both gifts from Wade. The flashlight was a tiny one, light and plastic so she could hold it and carry it without taxing her hands too much. She didn’t want to admit that she was grateful, having lived through all kinds of storms and tornado warnings and having never needed more than a candle and a match. At least this way she didn’t have to worry about setting the whole house on fire because of her shaking hands.
Using the little flashlight to guide her, she made her way to the kitchen to make sure it wasn’t just her house without power. Merilee’s house was in complete darkness, too, so it had to be the danged storm. She frowned. This outage was very inconvenient. It was still too early to go to bed, but she couldn’t watch television or read a book without proper lighting.
Sugar stared through the window again, deciding what to do. Merilee was home—Sugar had seen all the lights turned on, the house blazing like a bonfire—meaning they could probably see the house from Mars. Even though Sugar didn’t pay the electricity bill, it still irked her.
She needed to talk with Merilee, to tell her what she’d discovered in the yearbook, let her know that she’d already told Daisy—she couldn’t think of her by any other name now. If Sugar had known that Merilee would actually spend a night in jail, she would have waited another day. No sense in giving Daisy a head start.
She glanced over at the wall phone. Why hadn’t Merilee stopped at Sugar’s house first? Maybe she’d tried to call and found out that the lines were down. Feeling desperate, Sugar had even put on her raincoat and taken it off twice already, planning on heading out in the storm to walk back to Merilee’s house, but had allowed good reason to intercede. She wouldn’t be of any use to anybody if she fell in the mud and couldn’t get back up. Her teeth began to hurt, so she forcibly relaxed her jaw. She should try the phone again.
Sugar pointed her way with the flashlight, then picked up the phone, listening for the dial tone. Dead silence. She pushed down the receiver several times, but the phone stayed quiet.
“Damn,” she said for the second time in less than an hour. She’d have to ask in the next Bible study if there was something in the Bible against swearing. She was sure she knew the answer, but she couldn’t think right now. Too much going on these days, what with Merilee going to jail and those poor children needing someone to cook for them. It was a wonder she remembered to put on her dress in the morning.
She looked out the window, having already decided she’d just go to bed early and go over to Merilee’s first thing, when something small and white ran past her back door outside. Pressing her glasses up her nose, she peered out again, wishing for about the hundredth time that she could see at night. It was horribly inconvenient, and, if anyone asked her, she’d say that it was rude of the good Lord to add night blindness to her growing list of things about getting older that were downright hateful.
She blinked, trying to get her eyes to try a little harder, staring at the spot where she was sure she’d seen Colin’s dog. It wasn’t his dog, of course, but she’d taken to calling it that because he said he saw it so much. Sugar pressed her nose against the cold glass of the window, as if that would work, and instead knocked her glasses off her face.
Leaning down, she used the flashlight to find them, then took a while straightening before putting them back on her nose and looking out the window. There. There it was again. It was hard to tell exactly because of the dark and the rain, but she was sure that white smudge outside in the grass was the little dog Colin claimed to have seen.
The thunder rumbled overhead, the lightning casting a bluish white glow over the porch and the boxwood hedges and the grassy area behind the house. It was the dog. She was sure of it now. And it was sitting and staring back at her.
As quickly as she could move, she went to the back door and opened it, hoping the dog wouldn’t be too scared to come to her. It shouldn’t be out in the storm, wet and without shelter. It would be cold and probably hungry.
“Come,” she called, not knowing what people said these days to call their dogs. “Come here, little doggie. Let’s get you inside from the rain.” She was speaking to the dark now, waiting for the next flash of lightning. As if answering her prayer, a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky as thunder cracked above, showing her the dog at the moment it turned and ran in the direction of Merilee’s house.
She closed the door against the cold and wind, deciding what she should do. Only a fool would go out in this weather. But that little dog was alone and must be scared. Maybe if it hadn’t looked so much like Dixie, she might have let her good sense prevail over any sentimentality. But it couldn’t be helped. Besides, she needed to talk to Merilee.
Her mind made up, Sugar moved cautiously through her dark house, the small but powerful beam of the flashlight guiding her way. She made her way to the front hall closet, which opened with just a push. Wade had changed out the door just for her when her arthritis started getting bad in her right hand.
She found her raincoat again and carefully placed the flashlight on the hall table, knocking over one of the pictures in the process because she couldn’t see. The coat buttons were beyond her abilities, but she could still tie a decent knot with the thick belt ties to keep the coat closed. She stuck her hand in one of the side pockets and found a plastic rain hat. She’d once had dozens of them, but over the years they’d deteriorated or had been torn in too many places to be useful. Nobody seemed to use them anymore; they were as out of style now as permanent waves.
After placing it on her head, she did her best to tuck in her hair and knot the ties under her chin before retrieving her flashlight. She’d made it to the door when thunder crackled above her, and the sky lit up with an odd green hue as lightning split the night and the storm sirens began to wail.
; • • •
MERILEE
Merilee pressed herself against the hallway wall and stared at Heather Blackford in the bathroom doorway. She held the marble clock in one gloved hand, the steam from the faucet filling the room behind her. She was in head-to-toe black, in one of her designer workout outfits with a matching hoodie. She wore only socks on her feet, and Merilee found herself staring at them, as if the socks might explain something.
Heather followed her gaze. “I didn’t want to track mud into the house, and there was a lot of mud on my boots—or Lily’s boots, I should say—because I parked my car about a mile away and had to walk.”
Lily’s boots. The ones she’d seen on the porch. She was having problems putting this together, understanding what Heather was trying to tell her. “Why are you here?” Merilee asked, some sense of preservation making her inch her way past the bathroom, toward the front room, where a weather alert was currently blaring from the television.
Heather stepped in front of her, blocking her exit, and laughed, the sound grating. And memorable. And there it was, like a cold slap to her face; Merilee finally knew why. “Daisy,” Merilee said quietly, as much in awe as in terror.
“Don’t call me that,” Heather shouted. “That was never my name.”
Merilee shook her head in confusion, trying to get all the pieces to fit together. Wondering if this was the karma Sugar was always talking about. “But why are you here?” Merilee asked, not because she didn’t know, but because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Sugar called me and left a message. Apparently she saw your yearbook. Happily, your night in jail gave me the time I needed to think and plan. Because if Sugar figured it out, I knew it was just a matter of time before you did, too. Although in high school you were pretty stupid. I was always so much smarter than you, remember?” She clutched the marble clock in front of her for a moment. “I’ve found that it’s the girls who are born beautiful who are always the most clueless. They figure out pretty early on how to get by on looks and charm, so there’s no need to work on brains or anything practical. It’s the ugly girls who have to cultivate their cunning and brains.” She took a step closer to Merilee. “Don’t you think?”